


The Long Defeat

by Lomonaaeren



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Angst, Drama, F/M, Goblins, M/M, Romance, Slavery, long con
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-18
Updated: 2014-12-06
Packaged: 2018-01-25 12:54:08
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 30
Words: 99,713
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1649354
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lomonaaeren/pseuds/Lomonaaeren
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Harry thought that becoming a slave to the goblins was about the worst thing that could possibly happen, except the sinking of the wizarding economy that the goblins had threatened if he didn’t. Then Lucius Malfoy showed up and offered to buy him instead, and maybe that was the worst thing. Or maybe not—at least, not if the Malfoys are sincere in their efforts to help him fool the goblins. Updated every Saturday evening.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Vault Exchange

**Author's Note:**

> This is being written as a thank-you fic for helenadax, who’s given me several virtual gifts and a lot of reviews over the years. She left this prompt of Harry being enslaved by the goblins and the Malfoys stepping in to help for the Draco Tops Harry fest a few years back, but although I intended to claim it, I didn’t get around to doing so before time ran out to submit fics for the fest. She asked for a happy ending and focus more on the con side than the angst side of the story. It does eventually get there, although with some angst at first. This story will be updated every Saturday evening.
> 
> The title is a phrase from _The Lord of the Rings_ : “And together through the ages of the world we have fought the long defeat.”

“I don’t know how you’re so calm.”  
  
Hermione spoke from behind Harry, where he was studying himself in the mirror. Well, not really himself. The chain-link collar that the goblins had put around his neck, instead. Such small links, Harry thought, reaching up and tugging on them lightly, to be so searing. The metal was colder than he had known it was possible for metal to be.   
  
“Calm?” Harry asked, and reached out to put his hand on the wooden desk beneath the mirror.  
  
It crumbled at once, the ashes flinching away from his fingers. Harry looked at Hermione, and she took a step back from him and spent a little while staring at the wood, although all of Harry’s friends knew what his magic could do to organic things by now when his anger was up. It had started after the war, and as near as Harry and Hermione could figure out, it was due to the remains of Voldemort’s Horcrux in Harry. Harry supposed it had to leave  _some_ stain.  
  
“You’re not showing it,” Hermione muttered, shaking her head.  
  
Harry shrugged, and looked at himself in the mirror again. No, he supposed the only  _visible_ sign of his temper was the flush to his cheeks and the flash in his eyes—although he thought Hermione really should have noticed that, since she was one of his best friends. “What good would showing it do?” he asked. “I always knew it wouldn’t last, you know, the devotion they were proclaiming to me after the war. They would need a scapegoat again sometime, and I was the perfect one. I just didn’t know it would change so soon.”   
  
“The goblins shouldn’t have made their threats,” Hermione whispered. “And it’s  _wrong,_ for so many people to care more about what’s in their vaults instead of your life.”  
  
Harry smiled at her over his shoulder, the kind of smile that would crack his teeth if he hadn’t already decided that was dumb. “They don’t know me personally. They think it’s only for a year, anyway, and what’s so bad about that? I stole things from Gringotts. I probably deserve it somehow or other. And it’s important to keep the goblins happy.”  
  
Hermione glared at him. “You don’t  _believe_ that. And I know you haven’t been reading the papers since the day you dissolved that one with Skeeter’s article blaming you for Dumbledore’s death.”  
  
“I know how they think.” Harry rolled his neck back, and listened to the collar clink and bounce. “I always will. Anyway. This is the way it worked out. And after this year…” He let the words trail off, and saw the blurred shadow in the mirror as Hermione leaned forwards to hear him.  
  
Harry smiled with a force that  _would_ crack his teeth if he thought too much about it, and nodded to Hermione. “After this year, I’m gone from the wizarding world. I’ll make my own path and my own freedom, and I’m done with  _every-fucking-thing else._ ”  
  
Hermione closed her eyes and reached out a hand to him; Harry saw it in the mirror. Then she let it fall. “Of course,” she whispered. “You deserve at least that much, when they’ve taken away so much.”  
  
“So glad you agree,” Harry murmured, but he found Hermione’s hand and squeezed it to let her know that he knew where she stood. “Let’s get this over with.”  
  
*  
  
“Harry Potter, designated slave of the goblins for one year…”  
  
Harry stared over the heads of the crowd gathered to watch his punishment, staring instead at the far stone wall of the courtyard. That was what it resembled the most, for all that it was a cavern beneath Gringotts and far from the open air. A square, flat floor, and square, rising walls, sculpted by some magic or tool that Harry didn’t know the name of. The walls were absolutely blank, undecorated stone, unless one counted the richness of the bronze sconces where the torches burned.  
  
“And you will not set foot beyond the bank for the duration of that year…”  
  
Harry could have shifted and shouted and ruined the moment, but he found he didn’t want to. The crowd hadn’t come to bear him silent witness or support, he knew that much; they had come to watch him be condemned and ensure that he was actually taken into Gringotts as a slave. They had come to be sure their vaults were safe.  
  
The only way he might defy them and the goblins, for a little while, was to hold his face absolutely blank and smooth and refuse to listen to the terms of his slavery, which he knew damn well already. So he stood there, and looked at the stone, and told himself that it wasn’t so bad, that it was only one more year with the Dursleys, and then he would be  _free, free, free,_ and he would find a place in the Muggle world that no one except his friends knew about, and bury himself deep.  
  
“The terms to…”  
  
It took Harry a minute to realize that the goblin who was standing up in front of the crowd on a large, scone-shaped dais and reading out the scroll had trailed off not because Harry had stopped listening to him, but because of something else. He turned his head.  
  
Two figures were forcing their way up towards the dais, struggling as though through thick water. The crowd gave way to them, so Harry wasn’t sure why they needed to struggle so much.  
  
Then he recognized the blond hair as the smaller figure’s cloak fell back and revealed his head. He nodded. Oh, right. Malfoys. Probably come to take some kind of payment from Harry in turn, and demand that he be a slave loaned out to them sometimes. They could make those demands all they liked, but Harry knew they wouldn’t get anything. The goblins had been very clear about how Harry would serve them and only them, and loaning him out to wizards—who might treat him a little more kindly—would never happen.  
  
So Harry watched in amusement as Lucius and Draco Malfoy halted in front of the dais and stared up at the goblin. Behind them came Narcissa, following the clear path her family had made for her rather than struggling. Harry met her eyes, and she flashed him a dazzling smile.  
  
Harry stared. The smile wasn’t the smirk he would have expected, and Narcissa’s hand briefly extended to him, out from under the sleeve of her robe, as though to offer him something to hang onto. It disappeared again, but the sight made him wary. What had they come for? Was it some fiendish way around the goblin laws that they had come up with because of the life-debt Harry owed Narcissa?  
  
For a moment, he wondered whether life-debts would allow the Malfoys to enslave him when this year was done.  
  
And then he remembered that he didn’t care, because he would leave, and allow the unpaid debts to fall on him as they would. Hermione had warned him once that debts like that, not repaid, could diminish a wizard’s magic, but what would Harry care? He would be living in a place where he didn’t need magic.  
  
“Mr. Malfoy.” The goblin holding the scroll moved so that the sound of crumpling parchment drifted around the room. “You have something to say?”  
  
“Yes, I do.” Lucius’s voice was clear, and he stood up as though he were still the all-powerful Malfoy lord and governor of Hogwarts that he had been when Harry was in his second year. Harry just watched. He was almost going to enjoy the moment when Lucius found out that the goblins weren’t obliged to yield Harry to him. “I wish to make an offer on a certain slave, one that I will take into my home and punish as I see fit.”  
  
There was a grumble around the cavern. Sarcastic laughter, protests because that might mean the goblins wouldn’t feel that their debt was fulfilled and take the bank away, cries of joy—it could have been all of those and none, and Harry wouldn’t have cared. He went back to looking at the stone wall.  
  
Lucius was going to fail. That was all there was to it. And a good thing, too, because while the goblins would put Harry to back-breaking labor and probably starve him, they couldn’t use the  _Cruciatus_ on him. The Malfoys would.  
  
Harry was sorry for what the  _Sectumsempra_  curse had turned out to be, the mess he’d made of Draco’s chest. But he wouldn’t forget, he wouldn’t  _ever_ forget, that Draco had been trying to use an Unforgivable Curse on him when it happened.  
  
 _Never again._ The goblins’ slavery was the last time Harry ever intended to submit to bad treatment of any kind.  
  
“You cannot offer us anything we would accept,” the goblin with the scroll said, and Harry thought about watching to see Lucius’s mouth gape, but in the end the wall was more interesting. “We have chosen, and for his crimes, Harry Potter must pay us the gift of a year’s labor—”  
  
Harry also thought about spitting when he heard the word  _gift_ , but endurance was the best option here, and the goblins would make him pay for disrespecting them in public. He stood there with his mouth shut.  
  
“I can offer you a vault.”  
  
Harry looked around, gaping. Then he saw Draco and Narcissa watching him, and shut his mouth again. He would not look weak in front of them, would not yield, would not bow down.  _Never_ again. He’d had enough of giving in.  
  
“We have enough money,” the goblin with the scroll said, though Harry was sure he wasn’t the only one who had seen the minor tremor work its way through his claws. “We do not need anything you can give us. Need I remind you that we would take away your money if not for Harry Potter surrendering to us?”  
  
“Not money.” Lucius gave the goblin a hard, sweet smile. That expression made Harry want him to lose all over again. “The vault itself. The carving out of rock, the space beneath Gringotts. Yours to do what you will with. Provided that you give Harry Potter to my family and count the debt paid.”  
  
More gasping. Harry stared. He could see Hermione on her feet out of the corner of her eye, her hands making furious gestures, but he couldn’t look away enough from the Malfoys to see what she wanted him to do.  
  
That was—incredible. Harry knew from the research Hermione had helped him do into goblins, when he still had some hope of getting out of paying the debt, that the goblins hated the way the wizarding world had them hold Gringotts and all its contents in trust for wizards. The goblins had been the ones to dig the caverns, create and name and number all the chambers, and set up the guards like dragons that kept the vaults safe. They had had to accept wizarding gold after they began losing their political standing to the Ministry’s new laws. They could pretend to own the space, of course, but they never would as long as wizards still maintained a familial claim to them.  
  
To have a wizard give part of that space back to them might satisfy a goblin’s craving for possession and ownership in a way that not even having Harry as a slave would do.  
  
The goblin on the dais swayed on his feet and cast a longing glance back towards the ranks of goblins behind him, as though he hoped someone might come forwards and volunteer to save him from making the decision. But all of them stood there, enchanted by the vision, maybe, or not wanting the burden, and the goblin grunted and turned back again.  
  
“You would need to hold by certain terms,” he said.  
  
Harry clasped his hands in front of him and held them there, tight. He was going to break his wrists if he kept standing there like that, holding them, he thought. It wouldn’t matter.  
  
“You would need to make sure that Harry Potter did not venture outside the Manor for a year, and you would need to ensure that his suffering in part paid for our suffering, when the dragon rose from the vaults,” the goblin continues.  
  
Harry bore down, and down. The bones were creaking. He could hear Lucius Malfoy’s calm replies, somewhere behind the roaring of blood in his ears, but those didn’t matter, not  _next_ to that roaring.  
  
He had made his last decision to submit. He had said that he would allow the goblins to enslave him, but he had never said anything about the Malfoys. He was going to break free now, because he knew what they could do to him,  _would_ do to him. They had the life-debts to hold them back, maybe, but Harry owed them two in return, and they were forced to abide by the terms that the goblins had said they were going to make for Harry’s slavery in the original contract.   
  
They would curse him. They would increase his hunger until he wanted to eat his own flesh. (Harry knew that Lucius could cast that curse, having run across it in records of the first war). They would make him writhe with pain, and they would make him do impossible things, and call him  _freak_ in the same way that the Dursleys had, if not for the same reason. At least with the goblins it would be revenge, not abuse.  
  
Harry took a quick breath, light, curt. He already knew how he was going to move. His magic wouldn’t do anything for the chain-link collar around his throat or the chains he was bound with, but he could lunge to the side and touch the goblin. He would crumble into ash. And while everyone was still gasping over that, Harry would touch Lucius’s wand into ash, and then Summon his own, and Apparate.   
  
He didn’t care that he had never used that particular magic on someone else before. In fact, he was usually careful not to touch anyone but his friends when he was this angry. He was soaring in the middle of a clean, almost heavenly despair. He was going to break free, or he was going to die, and at the moment, it didn’t matter much which one it was.  
  
A small noise caught his attention. He turned his head, and saw that Malfoy, or Draco, was standing there with his eyes on Harry, shaking his head frantically. He hesitated, then conjured a small tongue of fire on his wand, which danced and vanished at once. His eyes on Harry still didn’t move, still clung and pleaded.  
  
Harry stared back, not knowing what it was, except a delaying tactic. What—  
  
And then he knew. Malfoy was reminding him of the Fiendfyre, the life-debt he owed Harry. He was trying to tell him that this wasn’t a trick, or a plot to hurt Harry, that they were going to do something else. Or perhaps simply try to fulfill the debt.  
  
Harry stared again. Draco’s eyes on his were bright and frantic.   
  
 _He only wants to save his father’s life. He doesn’t care about me._  
  
But there was also the fact that Draco had been watching Harry closely enough to recognize the rage, and had tried to prevent it from exploding. The same thing might happen during his enslavement, Harry supposed. Perhaps the Malfoys would treat him better than Harry was imagining, simply out of fear of their own lives.  
  
 _And if they don’t, I can escape better later, anyway. I can dissolve all their wands and their house-elves to ash, and I can smash their anti-Apparition wards better than the ones on the bank, too._  
  
So Harry relaxed, and stood there without a word as the goblins concluded the deal and transferred his “ownership” to Lucius Malfoy. All the time, Draco watched him, never looking away, even when Harry shifted and sent him a glare. Draco only shook his head and continued watching.  
  
 _Not what I thought he would do._  
  
That intrigued Harry enough to put off the escape he would have tried. For now.  
  
*  
  
Draco wanted to bow his head and sigh when the deal concluded without further problems, and it turned out that his father now owned Harry Potter. But he couldn’t. The goblins wouldn’t want that reaction from him, wouldn’t expect it. They had sold Potter in the first place only because Draco’s father had made a sly little speech implying how much he would love to abuse his authority over Potter. The goblins would want gloating. They would want  _villains_.  
  
One thing Draco had learned over the past two years was that he didn’t have the heart of a true villain. He couldn’t torture, he couldn’t kill, and he was even bad at maniacal laughter.  
  
But he could hang on until they had Potter out of here and could explain the truth to him. He had to.  
  
For now, his task was to match stares with Potter and try to ignore the sense of dancing power around him—another reason Draco would never make a good villain, he was far too sensitive to other people’s magic. It could unfold in circles, or in sharp knives, or in spirals.  
  
Potter’s magic was spirals  _edged_ with knives. Because he had to be special like that, in the middle of everything else.  
  
Draco shook his head, eyes still connected with Potter’s. It was starting to hurt, almost, holding the eye of someone who had the power to destroy everyone in the giant room if he wanted to. But there was no one else to reassure Potter that they weren’t kidnapping him or doing something else awful to him. So he stood there, and closed his eyes in relief at last when the goblin who’d been making the announcement so far said, in a high, croaking voice, “Mr. Potter is now the property of the Malfoys.”  
  
Draco felt the cool presence at his shoulder that indicated his mother had drawn near.  _A good idea,_ he thought, looking up.  _I’m glad she’s here before Father._ Lucius was the one Potter had fought more than once, and his mother was the one Potter owed the life-debt to.  
  
“Mr. Potter,” his mother said, her voice like a soft snowy shadow. “I hope that you will come with us without trouble.”  
  
Potter shrugged, but his magic sharpened and drew in towards his body, in a spiked maelstrom this time. Draco had to bite his lip to keep from snapping at his mother when she reached out to take the chains that wrapped around Potter’s arms. It was like trying to use a tiny leash on a dragon.  
  
But in the end, although he kept his head bowed and his neck quivering as though he would like to fight his way free, Potter let Narcissa tug him along. He walked with his hands clasped in front of him, and all his muscles bunched, and the chains rang like celebratory bells.  
  
The goblins laughed and clapped as they watched. Potter’s friends were on their feet, the Mudblood with her hands over her mouth. Draco couldn’t help sneering at them as their little cavalcade passed. They thought this was worse than the goblins, but of course they did. They would probably rather see Potter dead than associating with former Death Eaters of his own free will.  
  
“Harry! Mate!”  
  
That was the Weasel, running to catch up with them. Draco turned around, exchanging a flickering glance with his father. They had to keep the act up in public, which meant they had to restrain Weasel from trying to break Potter free, with violence if necessary.  
  
Potter was the one who restrained him before Draco could even put his hand on his wand, and he did it with nothing more than a nod and an intense gaze. “I think this will be better,” he said, not looking at Draco or Narcissa or Lucius, his presence dismissing them, erasing them out of his life. “Better than it—would have been. Even though they won’t let me outside the Manor.”  
  
“But we could have visited you in Gringotts, and now we can’t!” Weasel was rocking and hopping on the balls of his feet, not coming any nearer, but looking as if he would have dearly liked to. Draco shuddered to think what would have happened if Potter had not held him back as far as he had.  
  
“I don’t think you could have,” Potter said, and turned to face Granger, who had hurried up behind the Weasel, not something Draco had even noticed. “Hermione, explain it to him. You were there when the goblins told us about the terms of the debt I would pay.”  
  
“It’s true, Ron,” Granger said, her body angled as if she would move in between Weasel and Harry in a minute. She laid a caressing hand on Weasel’s arm, and Draco had the most nauseating flash of what they were probably doing the minute Potter’s back was turned. He had to close his eyes and shake his head to clear it. “Remember? The goblins said they would take Harry’s freedom for a year. That means that they would have made sure that he couldn’t venture out of the bank, and no one could come  _in_  to see him. They would probably have had him working in the deep vaults, anyway, and no one’s allowed down there unless their vaults are already there.”  
  
She was looking at his father, Draco realized. Well, perhaps she realized the significance of him giving up a vault to “rescue” Potter.  
  
 _Let’s hope that she remembers the significance of life-debts, and that she can teach Weasley._  
  
“All right, then,” Weasley said, and leaned forwards as if he imagined that a whisper would evade the fascinated people craning their necks from all directions. “But the Malfoys have  _wands_.”  
  
“Right, they do,” Potter said, and smiled. Draco shuddered as that edged magic brushed up against his skin again. In that mood, Potter could burn or damn the world, or perhaps leap out a high tower without a safety net below. Draco was a little surprised that he hadn’t done something like that already. Presumably the goblins’ threat had kindled his martyr complex. “But there are ways around that.”  
  
Weasley’s gaze sharpened. “Harry,” he said, “before you pull a dragon’s tail, make sure that you talk to us.”  
  
 _Pull a dragon’s tail?_ Draco thought it was a metaphor. He hoped it was a metaphor.   
  
Then he remembered what he had heard about the debt that the goblins had insisted Potter pay them back for, and he was no longer sure.  
  
“I will,” Potter said. “Lots.” He turned to Lucius and cocked his head. “I presume that I’ll be allowed to send owls to my friends?”  
  
Draco’s father had perfected an even better mask for the public in the past year since the trials than he had had before. He shook his head slightly now and curled one finger in a beckoning gesture that made Weasel start frothing at the mouth. Granger looked little better, but she was pulling on Potter’s arm and trying to say something to him that Potter didn’t listen to.  
  
Potter just nodded, remotely. The look in his green eyes made it seem as if he was gazing through a window at another world.  
  
Draco shivered, and ducked around his mother to be on the other side of her from Potter as they paraded him out of the bank, and the cameras flashed, and the shouts resounded, and the curses came their way—and deflected from his father’s careful Shield Charms and the bank’s wards—as some people thought this transfer of the debt meant that they would lose their money to the goblins after all. He could not  _wait_ until they could explain everything, and Potter might stop wanting to kill them.  
  
 _Might_ being the important word there.  
  
His hands shook, and he scrubbed his palms quickly on his robes, and continued walking.


	2. The Long Con

Harry’s first thought about Malfoy Manor was that it held more space than anyone would ever want or need.  
  
His second thought was: anyone  _sensible._  
  
His third thought was that the Malfoys weren’t sensible, which was probably going to have consequences for him, one of these days.  
  
Oddly, it wasn’t that bad as long as he kept his eyes aimed straight ahead and followed the tug on the chains. He presumed the Malfoys would replace them with something else soon. Couldn’t have your slave clattering around in those great old iron things and making so much noise and general tumult. Perhaps a delicate, decorative set of chains, made in elaborate white iron studded with diamonds, suitable for the people they intended to show him off to.  
  
If they had the money to buy chains like that, after the vault that Lucius had given up to the goblins. But Harry dismissed that thought with a snort. If they were  _really_ strapped for wealth, they wouldn’t have offered for his worthless carcass. And they could make all the money they wanted by showing him off to their friends, or associates, or whatever one called the people they used to be Death Eaters along with.  
  
They led him to a large room that looked like some sort of indoor garden. Harry glanced around, assessing it. The room was roughly oval, with a pond in the middle of it, under the only portion of the ceiling that was open to the sky. White marble walls curved down to the trellises and platforms where plants stood. There were nodding flowers there, but more climbing vines, and what looked like a lot of miniature fruit trees. Harry thought about destroying everything with his magic, because he could.  
  
And then he sighed and sat down where Narcissa gestured for him to sit, in a chair before a desk, which probably had charms on it to preserve it from the wet and the heat. What else could he do right now? Unless he wanted to kill them with a touch, and his rage had drained as they walked away from the bank.  
 _  
I got through the Dursleys. I got through half the wizarding world deciding to turn their backs on me once the goblins threatened them. I’m going to get through this._  
  
The rage would come back if he needed it, if the Malfoys tried to curse him or hurt him more than they had done already. He knew it would. So, for right now, he fixed his eyes on the patient, pale faces watching him, and waited to hear exactly what they wanted from him.  
  
Narcissa was the first to speak, her hands as lightly clasped as though she were speaking to a house-elf about arrangements for a dinner party. They all sat behind the desk, but the desk itself was so wide and long that Harry couldn’t see the chairs. “I suppose you don’t understand the reason why we bought you.”  
  
“I understand,” Harry said. “You wanted to make me miserable, and make money off me.”  
  
From the side, Malfoy—Draco—gaped at him. Harry rolled his eyes. Perhaps  _he_ hadn’t thought of the money-making potential that a captive Harry Potter could mean for his parents, but Harry was sure Lucius and Narcissa had. He met both of their eyes in turn and added, “Isn’t that right?”  
  
Narcissa and Lucius exchanged a glance of the kind Harry had seen Aunt Petunia and Uncle Vernon give each other when they were trying to come up with a last-minute present for Dudley. Then Lucius shook his head, and Narcissa sighed and sat up. “No. We had to lie to convince the goblins that we intended something as severe for you as they did, but we do, in fact, want to protect you and treat you as well as we can. You’ll have to stay inside the walls of the Manor; we can’t do anything about that. And you’ll have to act broken and despised if any goblins come on visits of investigation. There are other things we can’t allow you to do, like use your wand outside the wards where someone could detect it. But we do intend to work  _with_ you to give you a comfortable year, and make it only a pretense that we are mistreating you.”  
  
Harry didn’t let his spine relax. This was too much like some of the things that the Dursleys had said over the years, too much like the things Voldemort had sometimes said to convince Harry he wasn’t so bad after all. Lure him close, make him relax, soften him up, and then launch the hammer blow. “Why would you do that?” he demanded. “There’s no  _reason_ for you to do anything but hate me.”  
  
Narcissa again clasped her fingers in front of her, or interwound them. The way she was sitting, with her shoulders high and still and stiff, set off all sorts of  _other_ alarms in Harry’s head, because, frankly, that wasn’t the way he thought normal people, ones who had sensible reasons for buying him, sat.  
  
 _But maybe it’s stupid to demand common sense out of anyone in this scenario. It’s stupid that the wizarding public abandoned me and allowed me to be sold in the first place._  
  
“We have life-debts to you,” Narcissa said quietly. “Not to mention the other less tangible but no less real debts that we owe you for having killed the Dark Lord and restored what we can have of our good name. That my husband is free right now and not in prison—and perhaps also my son—I must attribute to you.” She shook her head slightly. “I see by your eyes that you do not believe me. Nevertheless, you should ask yourself for what  _other_ reason we would do this. I am confident that the ones you come up with would make even less sense for someone like us than this. If you think about it.”  
  
Harry leaned against his chair and gaped at her. He was too late to hide his surprise anyway, so he said the first thing that came into his head. “No one has  _ever_ said anything about what they owe me for defeating Voldemort.”  
  
Simultaneous flinches from all three of them, which Harry could have found funny if he was in the mood. As it was, Narcissa bowed her head and murmured, “We would ask you not to speak of him by that name, since it will still cause us distress. But that is one of the reasons. Did you think we would be  _un_ grateful?”  
  
Harry ran a hand over his face. He was too tired for this. But he had been too young to participate in the war, too, and too young to lose his parents, and too powerful for the Ministry to treat normally. He might as well get used to being “too” everything. “I thought you would be angry at me for losing your husband the position he had in  _his_ inner circle.”  
  
“By the end of the war, I no longer cared about that,” Lucius said, perhaps because his wife had nudged him in the side with her elbow. “I wanted only to be free of the demands that pressed on me.”  
  
Harry raised his eyebrows. “Why? Anyone at the time would have bet on Vol—him to win the war, and not me.”  
  
Lucius grimaced. “I did not say that having faith in you was easy. Only that we had no choice. I was out of favor. So was my wife, for having gone to Severus Snape and persuaded him to swear an Unbreakable Vow saying that he would complete Draco’s task if Draco failed at it.” Harry wondered if he was the only one who noticed that Draco turned his face away at the words, his throat bobbing. “And Draco, for not having completed a clearly impossible task that was only ever intended as punishment in the first place. If he had won, the Dark Lord would have destroyed us, sooner or later.” He spent a moment staring at Harry as if he could impress the next words into his mind telepathically, and then burst out, “I  _did not_ become a Death Eater to spend my days in a piranha pool, with everyone else trying to eat me alive.”  
  
“A very good comparison,” Narcissa murmured, laying her hand over her husband’s.   
  
“Okay,” Harry said. He thought about it a little more, and came up with a question that Hermione would probably never forgive him if he didn’t ask. “But why not protest earlier, when the goblins wanted to enslave me? Why now?”  
  
Lucius gave him a strange look. It went on being strange, until Harry didn’t think it was simply that he was tired. Then Narcissa whispered into his ear, and Lucius laughed a little, some of the lines of strain on his face easing.  
  
“Do something  _direct_?” Lucius asked. “When the goblins could have stopped us, and would have sensed right away that our ruse was only that, instead of the plan we came up with to trick them?” He snorted. “Of course not. We are Malfoys.”  
  
Harry thought of pointing out that if Malfoys could snort, which wasn’t very dignified either, then they could sure as hell act directly. But Malfoy—Draco—was fidgeting in his seat now, and the chains were heavy, and part of him wasn’t hesitant to trust, to reach out and accept what was offered. If only because there had been no hope, and suddenly there was some, and he was as incapable of ignoring it as he had been of ignoring the food that the Dursleys offered.  
  
 _Just so there are no misunderstandings, though._  
  
“I have magic capable of crumbling any organic thing I touch,” he said abruptly. “Wood, plant fibers, anything that was once alive. And flesh. It’s why the goblins have me in chains instead of ropes.” He fixed his eyes on Narcissa, since she was the one who seemed to speak the most for them and understand everybody’s position the most. “Try to hurt me and I’ll use it on you.”  
  
Draco jumped as though he wanted to run out of the room. Even Lucius paled. But Narcissa reached out, her hand slow-moving and subtle, but not hesitant, and placed her fingers on the bones of his wrist in what was almost a caress.  
  
“We would expect nothing else, when so many have played you false,” she said. “Welcome home, Harry.” She stood up and gestured, and a house-elf appeared in front of Harry’s chair, bowing so fast to everyone that his ears almost fell off. “This is Ren. He will be your personal elf for your stay here. Would you like to go to your room now?”  
  
And maybe it was a trap, but Harry didn’t care anymore. The backwash of rage and hope had left him exhausted, trembling.   
  
“Yes,” he said, and stood up. Ren snapped his fingers, and the chains vanished.  
  
Harry lifted his wrists and rubbed them a little. He hadn’t realized that the weight irritated him more than not being able to move freely until that weight was gone. He turned his hands over, and frowned for a moment at the welts there.  
  
“Allow me,” Narcissa said, and leaned her wand against the welts. Harry passively allowed her to heal him. Maybe he should have been more suspicious, reacting faster, striking back, but the Malfoys hadn’t proven themselves treacherous like the Dursleys so often were—  
  
 _Yet_.  
  
And that weariness was still there, weighing him down more heavily than any chains. Too many changes in his life in too short a period of time, and there was nothing he could do, and nothing he wanted to do.  
  
“Yous is coming along now,” Ren said, and led the way around a corner and up a flight of stairs that looked as if they climbed forever. Harry decided he could climb them, though, for the promise of a soft bed at the end.  
  
He could feel his brain trying to work as he climbed, coming up with ways around the prohibition on sending letters to his friends, and he could hear the Malfoys starting to talk behind him. Part of him thought he should listen.  
  
He couldn’t care enough, though. Resignation and rage and hatred and relief combined to make him drop straight down the moment his head hit the pillows, and if someone pinched or pulled at him after that, he would deal with the bruises when he woke.  
  
*  
  
“Can we trust him in the house?” Draco’s father was asking. “You heard what he said about his magic. If can touch any of those old chairs that Aunt Emily left and disintegrate them—”  
  
“I should think that he wouldn’t do that as long as we take care not to irritate him,” Narcissa said, and turned to look at Draco.  
  
Draco glared at her. “What? Do you think I would try to irritate him the way I did in school? No! Not knowing he can do that.” He shivered again. This was worse than that remote look in Potter’s eyes when they were taking him out of the bank. Now he was going to be in close quarters with Potter for at least a year.  
  
 _He might change._  
  
Draco didn’t think Potter had changed since the war, though, except to grow angrier and more dangerous. He’d still been more concerned about his friends when they were trying to get him out of there than the welts on his wrists or the true motives of his captors or his change in circumstances. And if Potter started trouble with him…  
  
“You need not speak with him,” his mother said, shaking her head. “I think we’ve proven today that I’m the only one of us who can successfully converse with him.” She sighed and glanced at Lucius. “You might at least make an effort, Lucius, as the older man, and one who does not have a boyhood rivalry with Mr. Potter.”  
  
“He cost me one of my house-elves,” Lucius said, standing up and arranging the formal robes fussily around himself. Draco smiled a little. At least he had a kindred spirit in his father. As long as there was a definite goal, buying Potter before the goblins could take him into slavery and thus repaying the life-debt, his father had moved like a comet, but now that the goal had arrived, he saw no reason why he should be troubled further. “I need not be sympathetic to him.”  
  
Draco nodded. “I’ll be happy to stay away from him and not start fights,” he told his mother. “But in school,  _he_ was always the ones who started them.”  
  
For a moment, Narcissa stood before them. Then she raised her eyebrows and said, “Very well,” and swept out of the room.  
  
There was another thing that Draco and his father were kindred spirits in, and that was in being able to feel like shit because of a single glance from his mother. Draco winced and looked at Lucius, who had gone a little pale.  
  
“I suppose,” his father said in strangled tones, “that  _common_ civility to the boy will not be out of the question, since we did bring him into our home. I would not have it said that we treated guests inhospitably.” He glanced at Draco. “But I expect you to help me in this, son, instead of undermining my efforts.”  
  
Draco squawked a little before he could get control of himself. “When have I ever  _undermined your efforts_?”  
  
His father ignored the question magnificently and flipped his cloak over his arm, calling to the elves to help him. Draco, who preferred to get undressed by himself even if his father  _did_ reassure him that there was no recorded instance of a house-elf ever taking advantage of a naked human, trudged up to his own room. Sometimes, he would have liked to Apparate, and this was one of them.  
  
He glanced once down the corridor that held Potter’s rooms, and then turned his back firmly. He kept nothing down there; when his mother’s family had been alive, they were used as guest rooms for them, but no Black had come to visit in years. Draco had no reason to feel deprived by the loss of a wing.  
  
 _It’s still going to be hell sharing my home with Potter,_ he thought, as he banged the door of his bedroom to behind him and began to take off his clothes.  
  
But they had done what they had to do. Draco had learned the difference between that and what you simply wanted to do well enough in the war.  
  
*  
  
Harry opened his eyes and sat up, magic waking in his muscles, stretching, pacing back and forth.  
  
No. He didn’t need to break out of chains, out of cages. He was in Malfoy Manor, not the goblins’ vaults, or wherever else beneath Gringotts they would have had him work. He was safe.  
Harry closed his eyes and shook his head back and forth.  _Safe,_ in Malfoy Manor. How Hermione would laugh if he told her that.  
  
And he would find some way to tell her that. He would play along with the Malfoys and fool the goblins into believing that the Malfoys were treating him like their broken toy, but he was not going to go a year without communicating with his friends.  
  
He had been a bit foolish to ask about it in front of an audience, though, he had to admit. The Malfoys had done exactly what they needed to. Lucius had offered a vault and no more extravagant price. They hadn’t mentioned or discussed anything except what would help them, hadn’t wasted a word more.  
  
There was something in that Harry could admire, and something a lot unlike what he would have  _expected_ from the Malfoys. He would have thought waste was what they were about, not economy.  
  
Harry stretched his arms above his head, looking around the room. It looked like it wasn’t much larger than the drawing room at Grimmauld Place, which made it a good choice. If the goblins visited unexpectedly, the Malfoys would be a little hard-put to explain why he had a grand room. They couldn’t give him a house-elf’s sleeping area, maybe, since he wouldn’t fit, but they didn’t have to be  _nice_ either.  
  
He put on his glasses and climbed slowly out of bed. The windows were false, obviously enchanted, displaying views of the sea and a snowy winter field that Harry didn’t pay much attention to, but it  _felt_ like early morning. His stomach grumbled, and Harry touched it once before he glanced down at his clothes.  
  
The Malfoys would probably expect him to appear with clean but not rich clothes, both in the play and in reality. Trouble was, Harry hadn’t brought any other clothes with him. The goblins had specified in the “contract” that made their slavery all nice and legal that they would provide him with rags to wear.  
  
Harry shrugged, and cast quick charms on himself, scrubbing his skin and the fabric of his clothes, then refreshing his breath and arranging his hair so that it looked as though someone had angrily smashed it flat with a hand, rather than angrily run a hand right through the middle. It was the best he could do, even Hermione agreed on that.  
  
Thus armed and fortified, he set out to find if the staircase was really as tall as he remembered.  
  
Ren appeared to meet him before he got to the door, smiling and bowing. “Harry is being restings?” he asked anxiously.  
  
Harry blinked at him and took a minute to translate that. “I’ve had all the rest I need,” he replied, when he realized that he really couldn’t. “Now I’m going downstairs.”  
  
Ren nodded. “Mistress Narcissa is to be waiting for Harry Potter,” he announced, and the door clicked open at the same moment as he vanished. A moment later, Harry heard the sheets on the bed vanishing as well.  
  
He relaxed. At least he wouldn’t need to be responsible for cleaning  _that_ up, then, and the goblins were unlikely to realize the difference between linen cleaned by one kind of magic and one cleaned by another.  
  
Yes, the staircase was still formidable. Harry went down the ivory-white treads that curved around and around, and discovered that the Malfoys’ economy was an illusion. He had never seen this part of Malfoy Manor, or else they had cleaned and polished and  _expanded_ after the war. So much whiteness and brightness everywhere, and what could be gilded was.  
  
Harry paused, then shrugged. His will had brought him this far, and he didn’t want to dissolve the Malfoys or disintegrate the house—yet. Besides, his magic couldn’t do anything about the gilding unless it was on wood.  
  
He descended the last curve of the staircase, and another hovering elf, who was flicking its hands at the floor in such a way that the dust appeared to leap up and become part of its fingers, bowed and squeaked Harry on his way through a forest of corridors. Another elf appeared whenever he was about to be lost and kept him moving.  
  
By the time he arrived at a door considerably taller than he was and made of black oak, with silver handles and hinges, it was ten minutes later and Harry was hungry enough to kill. He paused and shut his eyes, bowing his head for a few seconds while he thought. He could go in there and start an augment with the one Malfoy who had actually seemed sympathetic to him yesterday, or he could have something to eat.  
  
Hunger won. Since his childhood, it always did. He nudged the door open, his annoyance only increasing when it swung as if it was on a pivot instead of hinges.  
  
Then he rolled his eyes. They were the Malfoys, this was Malfoy Manor. What did he expect?  
  
He stepped in, and found Narcissa sitting on the near end of a large, round table fit for about seventeen knights. Harry stood in the doorway and waited for her to notice him, which she did after a moment. She had the  _Daily Prophet_ spread in front of her, and he thought her smile was strained when she greeted him. Well, it  _would_ be.  
  
“Harry,” she said. “Do you mind if I call you that? Of course we’ll have to adopt some degrading title in front of those awful goblins, but your last name seems a little formal for everyday wear.” Her smile eased. “And I’m certain you’ll hear it enough from my husband and son to remember who you are.”  
  
“Yes,” Harry said, as he sat down across from her. “That’s fine.” He glanced at the table, where plates of scones, kippers, toast, eggs, and some kind of mash, as well as giant pots of porridge and tea, had appeared. He blinked. Generally he’d at least seen the food arriving at Hogwarts.   
  
“Thank you for granting me permission,” Narcissa said, with a little nod, as if she was really honored. “I was waiting for you to join me before I ate. Are you hungry?”  
  
Considering he already had some honey spread on a scone and the entire thing jammed in his mouth, Harry thought the answer to that question redundant. He nodded and tried to slow down. He hadn’t eaten much yesterday, because rage had filled his stomach instead, and then he’d gone to bed early.  
  
Luckily, although Narcissa made some remark about the age of the house now and then, or said that she hoped he’d slept well, she didn’t say anything else that actually required an answer in words. Harry munched his way through the rest of breakfast, too absorbed in the flavors to glance at her often.  
  
He did look up when Narcissa said, “You may be wondering why my husband and son haven’t joined us for breakfast.”  
  
Harry did his best to give a large shrug, to convey that he hadn’t wondered it and didn’t care.  
  
Narcissa smiled a little sharply, but continued. “They were agreed that we needed to rescue you, to fulfill the life-debt and the debt of honor we owed you, but now that you are here, they don’t know quite what to do with you. I would give them a few days to loosen up and start treating you with courtesy.”  
  
Harry only nodded, and returned to his meal. That was fine with him. He could be polite if he met them, because they  _had_ rescued him, and because his life had changed so much. It included more important things than the taunts Malfoy might make about his hair or his parents or—other things that had irritated him. Some of Harry’s Hogwarts memories had gone dream-like in the intense time since the war. He remembered the mysteries and the battles and the moments of high emotion.  
  
But really, who cared what Malfoy had said to him on a spring afternoon seven years ago? Harry had been furious about it at the time, but he wasn’t that person anymore.  
  
Lucius might be different. Harry still remembered that he had nearly killed Ginny with the diary, that he wouldn’t have cared if she had died. But he could stay away from Lucius, too, or be polite when he came near. It wasn’t as though Lucius Malfoy would be dying to spend time with him, either.  
  
“I think you should have something to do,” Narcissa said, when Harry had finally stopped clearing his plate every time he piled more food on it. “Not slave work, not in the way the goblins would have meant it, but something to occupy you.”  
  
Harry faced her and nodded. “Whatever you like,” he added aloud, when he realized she was waiting for that. It seemed strange to him that she would want the words at all, but she was the only Malfoy in front of him right now. He might as well be polite to her, too.  
  
“What would  _you_  like to do?” Narcissa asked quietly.  
  
Harry smiled in spite of himself. “Fly, but I know you can’t let me outside,” he said. “What about a room where I can train?”  
  
“With hexes, and so on?” Narcissa nodded. “Of course. The goblins’ demands did rather interrupt your Auror training, didn’t they?”  
  
Harry shrugged, and didn’t answer. Let her think what she liked. She was hardly the only one assuming that he would be an Auror when he got free of his imprisonment, instead of leaving the wizarding world forever, as Harry still intended to do. His friends and the Malfoys had spoken up for him. No one else. He was done with the lot of them.  
  
“I think we have a room that can be  _adapted,_ although no room ready right now,” Narcissa said, and tapped her finger against her lips for a moment before a house-elf appeared at her side. Harry blinked, wondering if she had called it in silently, the way that people would cast a nonverbal spell, and then shrugged and leaned back. Perhaps it was something as simple as the elves sensing the mood of people who lived in the house. “Triffy, if you will examine the rooms in the south wing and see which can best be spared as a training room?”  
  
Triffy bowed. He seemed to be a less excitable elf than Ren, Harry thought, but he was probably more senior, to be serving Narcissa. “Triffy be knowing all the rooms in the south wing, Mistress,” he murmured. “The room of the couches would be being the most appropriate.”  
  
Narcissa smiled. “Of course. Thank you, Triffy.” She turned to Harry as the elf disappeared. “We have a room that we store old couches in, because they’re still fine furniture but are unsightly due to stains or burns that even the elves can’t remove. Or sometimes, simply, the color chosen, which tends to resist Transfiguration because of the accidental magic of children.” She shook her head, her lips narrow. “I don’t know  _what_ my husband’s ancestors were thinking.”  
  
Harry stirred a little. “You don’t have to—I mean, I can practice somewhere else if you don’t want to move them.”  
  
Narcissa waved her hand. “We are already using wizardspace to store them. It’ll be a simple matter to expand the wizardspace so that you can have some empty places to practice. It is infinitely flexible, after all.”  
  
Harry found the room for a smile for the first time since he’d walked through the doors of the Manor .That wasn’t Hermione’s theory of wizardspace at all, and he wondered what she would say if she could hear Narcissa’s. “Thank you. I appreciate it.”  
  
Narcissa nodded and leaned back, thinking. “You might be practicing sometimes when a goblin comes over. They’re likely to make at least one unannounced visit. We should think of a suitable lie for you to be practicing hexes.”  
  
Harry clenched his hands under the table. He was  _tired_ of lying. He wanted to tell everyone to go fuck themselves, and mean it. But he couldn’t do that until a year had gone past, so he might as well make the best of what he had.  
  
“You want me trained as a bodyguard,” he said. “Rather than take my magic away from me, you thought you’d use it.”  
  
Narcissa’s eyebrows slowly rose. “That is not at all a bad idea,” she said. “And it would make a good reason for you to be outside the Manor with your wand, as long as you don’t mind accompanying my son to Diagon Alley.”  
  
 _My son,_ Harry thought.  _She never refers to him as “Draco.” I wonder why?_ He nodded. “I wouldn’t mind.”  
  
“Good.” Narcissa rose and gave a slight bow to him that Harry returned before he thought about it. “I hope you can be happy with us, Harry. And I have hope that my husband and son will attempt to return the polite tolerance you will offer them.”  
  
Harry, with less hope, nonetheless nodded again, and stood up to call Ren to escort him to the couches room.


	3. Dueling Stances

Draco looked around curiously when he came down to breakfast. His mother ate before he or his father did, always, but as usual, she lingered at the table, sipping a cup of tea. But there was a second plate not far from hers, and it wasn’t as though one of the elves would be permitted to have it, which left—  
  
“Potter?” he asked incredulously, staring at Narcissa.  
  
“Yes, he was here,” his mother said, and turned a page in the paper. “I believe he’s in the south wing by now, practicing in the room that Triffy will clear for him. He’ll need to keep up with his hexes if we’re to have the pretense that he’s your bodyguard.” She clucked her tongue and shook her head. “ _Will_ you look at this? Celestina Warbeck has taken another lover, and once again she went after someone who’s already married. Disgraceful.”  
  
Draco sat back and tried to stop gaping. His breakfast was appearing, but his mother hated it if she could see half-chewed food in his mouth. “You’re giving him a  _training room?_ We’re going to pretend that he’s a  _bodyguard_?”  
  
“Well, the poor boy has to do something other than sit around all day,” Narcissa said, riffling the paper closed and looking at the back page. From her slight sneer, Draco knew the political cartoon was incompetently drawn, again. “This makes the most sense, and will allow us to have our story in place before a goblin visits.”  
  
“I think we’ve done all we have to.”  
  
His mother sighed delicately and laid the paper down. “You knew that it would not be easy to get him out,” she said. “But what did you think would happen afterwards? We cannot simply pretend that he doesn’t exist, although from the look on Harry’s face this morning he might have preferred that, as long as he gets fed.”  
  
“ _Harry_?”  
  
“No one will insist you call him that,” his mother said calmly. “He seemed rather surprised when I claimed the privilege. You can get along with him from a distance and not make friends, as long as you  _do_ get along. If he starts a fight, so be it, I’ll make sure he understands my displeasure, but the same thing applies to you, Draco.”  
  
Draco shook his head. He’d eaten an early dinner last night, but he couldn’t touch his food yet, not until he understood what his mother was talking about. “We don’t have to do anything more for him than we already did! Why are we giving him a training room and coming up with stories at all?”  
  
Narcissa half-closed her eyes. “I must admit to some relief that you are not already on your own, if you cannot think further of the consequences than the immediate action,” she murmured.  
  
Draco winced, and his mother reached out and gently touched the back of his hand. “Your father would say much the same thing,” she said. “But this is the reason.  
  
“We promised that we would help him fool the goblins into thinking he was still a slave. He can’t do that on his own, particularly if the goblins appear and he isn’t acting like a slave and all of us ignore him when he asks for help. If he’s bored, he could tear the house apart, or try to escape, and then the risk we took and the sacrifice of the vault mean nothing. And someone might get hurt, either him or you. Or possibly your father, although I will be having a little  _talk_ with him later about antagonizing Harry.  
  
“We don’t have to do this, Draco, but we should. The life-debts justify it. We do not behave graciously, the way we should, once and then stop. We follow through with the action and complete it. And in this case, the action will not be complete until a year in the future.”  
  
Draco had to think about the words, turning them over and over in his head like jewels falling through his hands, until he got most of the way through his breakfast. All the time, his mother sat across from him, reading through a paper she had obviously finished, instead of getting up and walking away as she usually did.  
  
Draco finally swallowed and said, “I—think I see. And I’m going to go find Potter.”  
  
“Are you?” His mother didn’t look up.  
  
“To offer him some help, and get our stories straight if someone asks.”  
  
His mother looked up this time, and Draco felt her approval, gentle and warm as an arctic summer.  
  
“There’s the son I raised.”  
  
*  
  
Harry rolled on the floor, then almost did a handspring when the floor itself opened and started hurling hexes at him. He was panting, and laughing, and the adrenaline running through his body was doing him more good than a thousand days of rest.  
  
The room that Mrs. Malfoy had let him have as a training area was  _wonderful._  There were openings everywhere that might fire sudden curses or hexes, though nothing above a certain level of power. There were dummies that sometimes hung there limply on chains, for Harry to practice on, and sometimes came to life and tried to curse him in return. Sly hands rose up and tried to snatch his wand. Trapdoors opened beneath his feet. Obstacles rose, piled cushions and smooth curls of wood and piles of what looked to be legs taken from the couches, which could invite Harry to hide behind them or come to life themselves, depending on the room’s temperament at the moment.  
  
Harry had no idea how the house-elves had managed to create this so fast. Probably there was a training room somewhere in the house that they used as a prototype, or at least one that had existed, once. House-elves had good memories, Hermione had said. They could remember meals that their owner had ordered years ago, or the owner’s ancestors. It was probably the same thing for rooms.  
  
 _Hermione._  
  
He would find some way to get in contact with her. He  _would_. Things were not going to stay the same as they currently were, because Harry would not let them.  
  
He rolled and dodged and sprang, and came up spinning so fast that he made himself dizzy, but escaped the last seven hexes that danced out of nowhere and nothing. They splintered the wall and doorframe instead, and Harry stood there, hands pressed over his stomach, his body aching with his laughter.  
  
“Potter?”  
  
Harry turned and came down lightly as he lifted, his wand pointing in the right direction to guard him against any spell in the back. Malfoy, his hand still on the door, let his mouth fall open, and then ostentatiously raised both hands above his head.  
  
“I only wanted to get our stories straight,” he said. “But if you want me to leave you alone with your paranoia, then that can be arranged, too.”  
  
Harry shook his head, biting his lip so he didn’t say something unfortunate. He had held his tongue around the goblins; keeping it around Malfoy shouldn’t be that hard. Malfoy was part of the family that had helped him.  
  
But the searing joy was gone, and he stepped mechanically aside from the room’s next attempt to roast his legs. He only nodded to Malfoy, and said, “Yeah, that would be a good thing.” He conjured a chair with a flick of his wand and gestured him towards it. “You can sit down, if you want.”  
  
“You won’t?” Malfoy glared at him as though suspecting an insult.  _And he has the gall to call me paranoid,_ Harry thought idly.  
  
“I prefer to stand,” he said.  
  
Malfoy worked his way over to the chair and dropped into it with a haughty lift of his chin, apparently waiting for Harry to say something unforgivable. Harry practiced in holding his tongue again, and constructed a series of spells in his head that he would use if he was dueling Malfoy, along with Malfoy’s likely responses.  
  
“Mother said you were thinking of a story about being my bodyguard,” Malfoy muttered finally.  
  
Harry wished, for a moment, that he could have been there to see the conversation between Malfoy and his mother. “Yes,” he said. “It would give me a chance to leave the house, and give me an excuse for retaining my wand. The goblins were going to take it away from me, and they might find it suspicious that you let me still have it.”  
  
Malfoy stared at him. “And you didn’t walk away from them?”  
  
Harry snarled at him. He could feel the magic whispering to him, beneath his skin, not the magic he had used in his wand but the magic that could disintegrate ropes, turn bones to dust, make flesh and skin never have been. “What the fuck would  _that_ solve?” he demanded. “Ron made the same argument, as if walking away was  _simple_ , as if the goblins wouldn’t track me down somehow. As if everyone wouldn’t blame me for dissolving the economy.”  
  
“The goblins wouldn’t have carried out that threat,” Malfoy said.  
  
“How sure are you?” Harry asked dryly. “Because people with more experience of the world than you have were saying they would.”  
  
Malfoy shook his head. “They don’t have that much control. The money in the vaults belongs to wizards.”  
  
Harry gave him a nasty smile, remembering something Griphook had said to him during the negotiations that had resulted in his year of slavery. “Who owns the money? The person who has it. Do you think you would have got that money out of the vaults in time? That you could even find your way down to your vaults without a goblin to lead you? No, they had the means to make things a lot worse. I agreed to serve out the year because I knew that, and because I’d decided that would be the last time someone could take advantage of me. Then I would leave, and that would be the end of it.”  
  
*  
  
“But you’re still here,” Draco pointed out. Potter was still trying to sound as though he was the champion of justice and reason, and Draco knew he just wasn’t thinking it through. “Why did you stay if you hate everything so much?”  
  
Potter only sighed and said, “Are you going to agree with the bodyguard story or not?”  
  
Draco shook his head. “There has to be something else we can come up with. I can protect myself.” He had promised his mother, he really had, but being back in Potter’s irritating presence had made his skin itch to the point where he wanted to lash out to defend himself. And surely Potter had to make compromises, too, if having him in the family was going to work out at all.  
  
Potter looked at him for a moment, and then narrowed his eyes. Suddenly invisible sticks were slapping Draco from every direction, breaking and beating against his ears and head and hair. Draco cried out and raised his hands to protect himself, but that only made the sticks hit his hands instead, making his palms and his knuckles sting. The blows never stopped.  
  
Finally, Draco remembered. Magical attack, right, it wouldn’t be delayed or blocked by something physical. He raised his wand and croaked out a Shield Charm, and it surrounded his head and hair. The blows stopped.  
  
Draco swallowed and lifted his head. Potter watched him with a faint, sharp smile.  
  
“And you think that you can protect yourself from me when you didn’t even remember the right defense against a simple nonverbal spell?” Potter asked softly. “You think the bodyguard idea would be impossible?”  
  
Draco scowled and stood up. All right, so he had failed one test, but that only meant he wanted to become better. “Teach me, then. If you think you’re so good at dueling magic and defensive magic, teach me.”  
  
Potter smiled at him, calm and cold and dangerously near the Potter who had made Draco want to edge away in the bank yesterday. “What makes you think I’m a good teacher? Since I’m someone arrogant that you don’t want to learn from anyway.”  
  
Draco sighed loudly, glad to notice that his hands weren’t shaking as he lowered the Shield Charm. “I want to learn from you. To prevent myself from being laughed at. And if you teach me, I’ll agree to the bodyguard story.”  
  
“Fine,” Potter said.  
  
Draco studied him. “You would just give in and agree?”  
  
“You’re angry at me for giving in and agreeing even when that’s what you want,” Potter said, in a voice as bored as stone. “I agreed because it might make time pass a little more pleasantly. And once this year is done, I’m gone, I told you.”  
  
“You said that was what would happen when you were the goblins’ slave,” Draco said, stepping back and raising his wand. He wasn’t even sure why he was arguing, except that Potter made no sense and it was time someone told him so. “You don’t have to do that now because you’ll be our bodyguard instead and won’t spend the year working in Gringotts.”  
  
Potter only frowned at him. “Who told you that was a reasonable dueling stance?”  
  
“What?” Draco glanced down at the way he was automatically standing, his feet braced apart and his arms spread so that any spells he cast could cover as much of the area of his body as possible. “I don’t know what you mean.”  
  
“I  _mean_ ,” Potter said, “that you’re spread too wide. Someone could come in under or between or, hell,  _through_ your guard, and you wouldn’t be able to stop them in time.” A Stinging Hex erupted from his wand and crossed the distance between them faster than Draco had thought possible, exploding against Draco’s chest and making him wince and hiss. “See? I don’t think it’s a good way to stand, is all.”  
  
“How would you suggest I do it, Master Duelist?”  
  
Potter only smiled, as though Draco’s best insults were so much foam that could break apart against his protection. “I would suggest that you stand like I do. Watch me.” He brought his feet close together and turned himself a little, in a way Draco supposed would protect him, but thought would make it difficult to fire curses at anyone who wasn’t standing to the side, too. “See?”  
  
“You’re all twisted around,” Draco said.  
  
“That’s so I can change directions easily,” Potter said. “Think of the most powerful spell you can that’s not actually Dark, and cast it at me.”  
  
Draco raised his eyebrows, but the temptation felt too good to refuse. They were behind wards anyway, which meant that the goblins wouldn’t be able to detect Potter using his wand, and the Ministry wouldn’t be able to detect Draco using Dark Arts. He raised his wand, spent a few moments thinking and to throw Potter off-balance—which he had to admit didn’t look as if it was working—and then said, “ _Confercio_.”  
  
The curse opened on either side of Potter, although you had to know what to look for, and Draco would probably have seen it as a heat shimmer if he didn’t know what was coming. Then the sides slammed together, trying to compress Potter into a small ball of flesh and bone.  
  
Except Potter wasn’t there. His silly-looking stance had changed into a nimble leap, and he was out of the spell before it had the chance to gather its full force. Draco opened his mouth to change its direction and send it after Potter before the power faded completely, but Potter was already busy with his own spell.  
  
“ _Decedes_.”  
  
Before Draco could recognize the spell, he felt it grip his legs, especially his hips. He turned around and began marching before he could think about it, straight towards the door of the room he’d come in by.  
  
Draco struggled madly against it, throwing his will at the magic, before he realized where he was going wrong. This wasn’t like the Imperius Curse, something that would break if you only had the mental strength. This was a pure command to his muscles, and he couldn’t stop it without breaking the actual spell.  
  
He snapped out a  _Finite,_ and then he concentrated and tried to make his will well out through his skin, a tactic that had worked more than once before when he wanted to block a Dark spell another Death Eater was using.   
  
It didn’t work this time. His legs continued to march, and Draco knew that if he didn’t watch out, he would find himself outside the door, and then he would probably never be able to get back into the room. Potter wouldn’t want to duel with someone who couldn’t guard himself against such a simple spell.  
  
He laid his wand against his legs, envisioned the way he wanted to stand when he stopped walking—the “reasonable dueling stance” that Potter had talked about—and this time poured his will into the spell he was casting instead of just trying to exercise it. “ _Finite Incantatem_ ,” he whispered, and the words made his lips tingle.  
  
The sharpness of the magic made him stumble. It seemed to nip at his heels and his hips, and he wondered what Potter would say if he fell flat on his face. Putting out his hands to possibly catch himself on the wall, it took him a moment to realize that he had stopped walking.  
  
“Very good,” Potter said behind him, so calm and cool Draco could hardly believe it was him, and couldn’t hear any emotion in his voice at all. “It took me ten minutes to break that spell the first time someone cast it on me.”  
  
Draco shook his head, turning around. “I don’t think you should flatter me if we’re going to be actually training together,” he said.  
  
“I’m not flattering you,” Potter said, peering at him. “It really did take me ten minutes the first time. I tend to lose my temper, though. And since the war, I can just fling my magic around. That makes focusing the way you have to do on that spell less of an option for me.” The same danger was glowing in his eyes that Draco had seen in the great cavern at Gringotts.  
  
Draco nodded cautiously. Then he cast, while Potter was facing him open and unguarded and wouldn’t be expecting it. “ _Smaragdus!_ ”  
  
The burst of blinding emerald light that was supposed to happen with that spell didn’t have a chance to shine before the wave of Potter’s wand dimmed it. He simply held Draco’s eyes, though, and cocked his head a little. “I’m  _never_ unguarded,” he said. “Don’t think it.”  
  
Draco felt a crawling shiver come up his spine. He couldn’t claim the same, even though he had lived through the same war—and probably worse dangers, with the Dark Lord  _right in his house—_ that Potter had.  
  
For now, he coughed and brought his wand up. “What was that dueling stance you were going to show me again?”


	4. Unfinished Business

Harry paused where he was, one hand still lifted to knock on the door in front of him. He had been supposed to meet Narcissa in one of the small sitting rooms for a chat at noon, but the door was partially open, and he could hear voices coming from behind it—Lucius and Narcissa Malfoy’s voices.  
  
Harry stepped back and cast a  _Tempus_ Charm, nonverbally. It told him that he still had another ten minutes before Narcissa would probably think he was late. He leaned on the wall and listened, quietly, ready to move if he had to so he could be inside the room before anyone would think he was eavesdropping.  
  
“Draco told me what you said.” By the sound of it, Lucius was pacing around the room, and his robe was rustling and sliding over most of the furniture. Harry held his breath and listened, but heard no crack of delicate ivory knickknacks falling to the floor. He exhaled, disappointed. “And there’s no reason that we have to put our son to inconvenience being nice to the boy.”  
  
“We must do what is gracious,” Narcissa said calmly. “I told you that already, Lucius. I  _did_ think you might have agreed when you agreed to give up your vault.”  
  
“That was a necessary gesture,” Lucius said. “Not one I would have done without the life-debts.”  
  
“True graciousness is what one will do outside of necessity” Narcissa said, sounding as if she was quoting something. “Are you going to ignore Harry for a year, Lucius? What will that do to your dignity, not to mention your ability to go about your own house? I know you. You would resent Mr. Potter for it, and come to restrict yourself to a few rooms. Such a wonderful example for our son.”  
  
Lucius came to a stop, from the sound of it. Harry resisted the urge to move closer to the door and peek through the gap, though. They would probably hear him. “I have no idea how to get along with him, Narcissa,” Lucius whispered harshly. “He lost me a house-elf, and I tried to resurrect the Dark Lord from one of his little friends.”  
  
Harry closed his eyes. It was do that, or burst into the room and scream at Lucius until he was hoarse for acting as though those two things were  _equivalent._  
  
“Yes, and you tried to curse him in the Department of Mysteries, and then he got rid of your Lord for you, I know the whole sorry tale,” Narcissa said, sounding impatient with said sorry tale. “That doesn’t have to do anything to dictate the way you behave now.”  
  
“Of course it does—”  
  
“No, Lucius, it does not.” From the sounds  _now,_ Narcissa had stood up, and Harry got ready to dive back from the door if she came towards it, but she only stopped walking a few seconds later. Harry envisioned her in front of Lucius, her hands clasping his shoulders and her eyes looking deeply into his, though of course he had no real idea what they would look like together. “You can do this,” he heard Narcissa whisper. “You can change things. You can be a new man. I believe in you.”  
  
There was silence, and Harry retreated from the door. He shouldn’t have listened to  _that_ much, he thought, but he deserved to know what they were planning to do about him, how they were planning to treat him.  
  
He waited for a count of fifty, which he thought would give them enough time to finish—whatever they were doing. Then he marched up to the door, and knocked.  
  
He heard a shuffling sound and a throat-clearing sound, and tried not to picture the way they might have sprung apart from each other, because it was simply too embarrassing. He stared at the wood of the door instead, and rather desperately studied the bright brass of the knob, and the plate around the keyhole, and then Lucius opened the door.  
  
They stared at each other for what felt like a count of endless heartbeats, and was probably twenty seconds. Lucius’s lip kept trembling like he wanted to curl it. Harry held still.  
  
“Come in, Harry,” Narcissa said, gently, and Lucius stepped back so that Harry could see into the room. At least Narcissa didn’t look as though she’d been kissing Lucius, or running her fingers through his hair, or something. She smiled and extended a hand to him, and Harry went up and shook it.  
  
Lucius made a little snorting sound. Harry shrugged. Presumably he’d been supposed to kiss it. Well, he wasn’t pure-blood, he didn’t know these things.  
  
“If we could sit down?” Narcissa nodded towards the far end of the couch. Harry sat down on it, and Lucius took a seat on a chair at an angle to him. Narcissa sighed, at one of them or both, and sat down next to Harry.  
  
“We agreed that you could pretend to be our bodyguard outside the Manor,” Narcissa told him. “The training room is adequate?”  
  
Lucius’s glare intensified when she talked about that, as though he didn’t approve of a room put aside to let Harry train at all. Harry wondered if he would feel differently if he knew Draco was using it, too. Then he tried to ignore Lucius altogether as he responded to Narcissa. “More than adequate, thank you.”  
  
Narcissa nodded. “The goblins will expect to see some kind of slave labor for us to put you to. But with the house-elves, having you clean things, or work in the kitchens or gardens, doesn’t seem like enough.”  
  
Harry nodded, bracing himself. “Is this where you tell me that I need to wait on you hand and foot? Or at least on the days when the goblins visit?”  
  
Narcissa blinked at him, looking a little lost. She opened her mouth, then cocked her head and said, “I would have left it alone, but you spoke as though it was a settled thing, so I must admit to curiosity. Why did your mind leap to that option first, Harry?”  
  
 _Because it’s the sort of thing I would have thought you’d do if you meant this slavery bit. Because it’s the sort of thing my relatives would have loved to have me do, if they weren’t too anxious about my freakishness rubbing off on them._  
  
But those were unacceptable answers, so Harry sat up straighter and shrugged. “It seems to be the only thing the house-elves don’t do for you,” he said.  
  
Narcissa shot a glance at Lucius, but Harry had no idea what message she meant Lucius to take from that; it seemed only to make him glare all the harder. Then she shook her head. “I was thinking of glamours instead. And decorative chains.”  
  
Harry blinked. “Goblins know metal. Are we going to be able to fool them if the chains aren’t heavy?”  
  
Narcissa smiled. “They’re also contemptuous of wizard magic. Glamour the chains enough, to look like heavy iron, and  _crude_ iron, and I think they’re likely to ignore the spells wound about them as not worthy of their attention.”  
  
Harry leaned forwards as he considered that. Then he said, “And what would you want me to do for you on the days the goblins visited? Serve the food? Kneel down and have you use my head for a table?”  
  
“What tales  _have_ you been reading?” Narcissa brushed a hand through her pale hair. “Those novels that purport to tell the truth about how pure-bloods once treated captured Muggles? I can assure you those are nothing but lies.” She paused exactly the right amount of time, then added, “No pure-blood of those times could have borne touching a Muggle that closely, or eating from a plate that had touched their scalps.”  
  
Harry laughed, because she had meant him to, and because it was funny, and because he could feel Lucius quivering with suppressed indignation. “All right,” he said. “So something else. The serving?”  
  
Narcissa nodded. “I think that you should scowl as much as you can, and clink the chains, and resist at least one order, so Lucius can pretend to blast you with the Cruciatus.”  
  
Harry turned to look warily at Lucius. He still remembered the man standing in the graveyard when Voldemort had  _actually_ cast it on him, and that memory made the words pop out of his lips before he thought about them. “Are you sure that he can pretend? That he won’t cast it for real?”  
  
Freezing silence from Lucius’s direction—and freezing silence from in front of him, Harry realized, with a sinking heart. He turned back around. Narcissa was sitting up with her lips pinched shut and her hands folded in her lap, looking straight at him with a more than disappointed sheen in her eyes.  
  
“I  _did_ think you had come to trust us more than that,” she said quietly.  
  
Harry sighed and responded as bluntly as he could, because that was what he had to do. “I trust you more than that. Not your husband. Draco is—okay. But Lucius and I have unfinished business between us.” He turned to look at Lucius. “Don’t we?”  
  
*  
  
The  _brat._  
  
Lucius wanted to react with more force than that, wanted to snap and snarl and tear. It had been his first reaction when someone insulted him ever since he was a boy.  
  
But his father had trained the immediate resorting to that reaction out of him at the same age. So now Narcissa’s eye bent on him reminded him of that training, and what they might stand to lose if they didn’t show Potter that they shared  _some_ common ground with him.  
  
Lucius ground his teeth for a moment. Then he nodded slowly and said, “Yes. We do. I am not sure what you can do to compensate me for the loss of my house-elf, and I am not sure which price you want for the amount of danger I put your friend in.”  
  
To his surprise, Potter’s teeth flashed in what looked like a grin. Lucius had expected simply a growl at the reference to Arthur Weasley’s youngest child. Instead, Potter leaned forwards and said, “You were willing to give up a vault to see me under your control instead of the goblins’. No one is going to question it if you take out a certain new sum of money, supposedly for the wards that you need to control me when I have my wand in hand.”  
  
Lucius frowned. “To what end will the money go?”  
  
“Find out the value of a house-elf,” Potter said. He looked as though he was standing in front of a classroom, the way he’d risen to his feet and put his hands on his hips. Narcissa’s slight smile said that she wasn’t inclined to interfere, so Lucius had to sit there and listen. “I’m sure there must be some kind of monetary value attached to them.”  
  
“Priceless, now,” Lucius said tightly.  
  
“More so than a human life?”  
  
Lucius blinked. Then he said, “You are talking about the payment of a weregild.” The idea intrigued him, although it had been a century and more since anyone in the Malfoy family had paid one. They had mostly gone out of fashion along with the sorts of duels that tended to kill or incapacitate someone so badly that the payment was necessary.  
  
“If that’s what they’re called.” Potter was supremely arrogant in his indifference to the matter of the price. Lucius felt his muscles coil with tension—  
  
And admiration. Someone who declared himself beyond all laws like that, someone who turned his back on the accepted customs of law and social convention, was only an outcast and someone to sneer down one’s nose at until he had the power to enforce his will, at which point he became a Dark Lord. Or at least a wizard whose favor could be courted.  
  
That Potter, under sentence of slavery, could somehow contrive to be someone like this hooked Lucius more powerfully than the idea of the weregild had. He wondered what would happen if Potter emerged from this year of slavery with his formidable will intact.  
  
Someone worth courting, indeed. Someone who might as well have kindly feelings towards the family who had sheltered him.  
  
“And the amount of money that a house-elf is worth would be subtracted from the weregild of a human life?” he asked, although he already knew where Potter’s thoughts were tending, and it seemed as if he should have from the time those intense green eyes focused on him.  
  
“Yes, exactly,” Potter said, glaring at him, as though he suspected Lucius would renege on him even when he had come this far with feeling out what Potter wanted.  
  
Lucius held up a hand to gentle him, and felt some strength return to him when Potter settled back on his heels instead of striking out. Yes, this could work. “Then I agree to the terms. Provided that we can consult some of the books in my library as well as the more recent tomes of law that might be in the Ministry libraries, and determine what the worth of property balanced against a life is.”  
  
Potter blinked, and then nodded. “All right. When you give me whatever amount of money it is, then you’ll forgive me for having freed Dobby, and I’ll forgive you for having put the diary in Ginny’s cauldron.”  
  
Lucius might have objected to this framing of the debate, but that was in a different lifetime, one where putting the diary in the cauldron had worked out and the Dark Lord stood before him. He nodded. “I will resign my disdain towards you, and speak to your cordially. I ask that you do the same with me, and not hold my actions against my son.”  
  
Potter rolled his eyes. “There’s other things that I can hold against Draco than your actions. He had some stupidities all his own, at Hogwarts.” Lucius refrained from asking, interesting as it would be to hear Potter’s side of some of those stories. It wasn’t really what they were here for at the moment. “But he and I have come to a sort of truce now, so that’s all right.”  
  
“Does that mean that you will trust us more now?” Narcissa, voice deep and soothing as always.  
  
Potter turned to face her, to consider her. Lucius remembered him saying that he trusted her, and concealed a smile. Potter was not naïve to do so, not exactly, as Narcissa had his wishes most at heart of anyone in the family right now, Lucius knew. But it was interesting that he turned instinctively to her, as Lucius did. She would probably exert the same gentle influence over Potter as she did over them, before long.  
  
“I hope I can,” Potter said. “But I don’t think we can know for certain until the goblins visit the first time.”  
  
Narcissa nodded. “We had the promise them they could come whenever they liked, but it might be wise to arrange a visit of our own initiative, so we can show them something we’ve prepared.”  
  
Potter grimaced, but nodded. “All right. Glamours of chains. The idea that I’m a bodyguard and that’s the only reason I’ve been allowed to retain my wand. What else should we come up with?”  
  
Lucius stood up and absented himself from the room as Narcissa and Potter began to discuss the details of the con they would create. In other times, with an ally he trusted more, he would have involved himself in the discussion, but he trusted his wife absolutely, and his presence would be unwelcome to Potter right now.  
  
He would show his good will and understanding, rather, by going to research the matter of the weregild, and learning how much he needed to pay to settle the debt.  
  
His stride lengthened, and he found himself smiling. A traditional, non-traditional way to settle the debt. Potter’s friends might find it repulsive, and Lucius’s associates certainly would have, but Potter had more good sense than Lucius had credited him with.


	5. Kneeling

Draco tried not to twitch as the goblins marched into the Manor.  
  
It was the way they walked as though they  _owned_ everything. They looked around, and nodded at the marble walls and the gilded mirrors as though they were old friends. They considered the portrait frames, and their fingers and claws rapped together. They were probably thinking about taking the portraits  _out_ of those frames, Draco thought, staring straight ahead but catching more than enough from the corner of his eye, and selling the frames for good money while burning the portraits.  
  
Because when had goblins ever cared about what humans wanted?  
  
“Mistress Malfoy,” said the one in the lead, whom Draco thought was the goblin his father had bought Potter from. He bowed over Narcissa’s hand. Draco could see nothing in her face but the lovely, motionless mask that she always wore whenever someone visiting made a mess at the table.  _Come to think of it, she hasn’t looked at Potter that way once since he arrived here._ “Thank you for inviting us.” The goblin straightened up and leered, though Draco had to admit that ordinary smiles would probably look like leers on the mouth that toothy. “Could we see the prisoner now?”  
  
His mother looked convincingly blank for a moment, then smiled. “The slave. Of course. I fear that’s our more common name for him.” For a moment, she turned her head to lock eyes with his father, who stood on the other side of the entrance hall with his cane supporting him. “We tend to think of prisoners somewhat differently.”  
  
Lucius nodded. Draco hadn’t been trusted with a part in this charade because his parents didn’t think he could lie well enough, so he just remained silent, the obedient son who would think whatever his pure-blood mother and father told him.  
  
Narcissa clapped her hands, and Ren appeared. “Summon the slave,” she said idly, and guided the goblins through the entrance hall, down the corridor, towards a sitting room where everything looked appropriately expensive without actually being so. All four who had come tottered after her eagerly.  
  
Draco relaxed with a  _whoosh_ of breath, and then caught his father’s warning eye and tensed again.  
  
“We cannot relax yet,” Lucius whispered harshly. “There is no saying but one of them will notice.”  
  
Draco nodded carefully, but he  _did_ have to say, “How do you know that Potter’s going to be able to keep up his end? I have more talent at acting than he does.”  
  
His father gained that strange, lit-from-behind smile that he wore lately when Draco mentioned Potter. “I think that you will be surprised in him. That young man is stronger than you think.”  
  
 _Than_ you  _think, not than_ we  _think,_ Draco thought crossly. He wished he’d been present at whatever meeting or discussion Potter had been at with his parents a week ago, to make them think that Potter was actually impressive.  
  
But he hadn’t been, and right now he could do nothing but troop after the goblins, Lucius coming behind him, leaning far more heavily on the cane than he was used to. They had to do this to keep up the charade of the story about needing Potter for protection. Draco understood that. But he still felt old, dull, bubbling resentment rising in him, and kept his head turned away from the stairs when he heard the clank of chains.  
  
Then he heard his father catch his breath in a sharp exclamation, and turned his head despite himself.  
  
Potter was coming down the center of the staircase, his face set in a pout that made Draco instinctively want to recoil. He wore chains that Draco knew were at least part glamour, but they swayed and sang and clanked with a convincing sound. Potter’s lip pushed out further when he saw Lucius and Draco waiting for him, and he shook his head and sat down in the middle of the stairs, folding his arms.  
  
Draco saw motion ahead, and realized that his mother had paused in front of the sitting room. There was a large mirror on the wall opposite its door that reflected the staircase, and thus the goblins could watch Potter in “privacy.” They were exchanging glances now, their fangs bared where their lips writhed back.  
  
“Come, slave,” Lucius said. Draco had to admit that he wouldn’t have been able to muster that particular voice, so haughty and repressive. He was too used to meeting Potter on equal grounds. “We have visitors who want to see you.”  
  
Potter pushed his lip further out, until it could have supported a continent with ease. “I’m  _tired_ ,” he whined. “I don’t  _want_ to.”  
  
Lucius stepped forwards and lifted his cane a little.  
  
Potter shrank and tucked his hands over his head. He was panting now, and his voice was soft and panicked in a way that made Draco’s spine prickle. “Please don’t, master. Please don’t hit me again. I’ll be ever so good.”  
  
Lucius lowered the cane and leaned on it, shaking his head in a way that seemed to convey even to Draco how tired dealing with a rebellious slave made him. “Then  _come_ ,” he said. “I will not tell you again.”  
  
Potter scurried down the stairs with his head bowed. He passed within a meter of Draco, and Draco didn’t think he would have recognized him if not for knowing him so long. Every line of his body screamed subservience, and he scraped and bowed endlessly as Lucius herded him into the middle of the corridor. The scraping and bowing didn’t look fake, either or at least Draco didn’t think they did. They looked like the kinds of things Draco would have done when the Dark Lord was living in the Manor.  
  
He winced a little as he thought about that, and suddenly some of Potter’s resistance to this plan began to make sense to him.  _Would I have wanted to live with_ him _forever? Well, Potter doesn’t want to please the goblins forever._  
  
His father caught Draco’s eye and nodded sternly down the corridor. Draco settled his shoulders, reminded himself that Potter  _had_ agreed to play this part for however long it was necessary, and then strutted forwards. Potter didn’t seem to notice him, but Draco aimed a kick at the back of his knee, and Potter whimpered and knelt.  
  
“I noticed that you sneaked a look at me this morning,” Draco said, bending down to whisper into Potter’s ear, although he was sure sensitive goblin ears would still pick it up. “You aren’t to do that again, no matter  _how_ many times you dress me. Do you understand?”  
  
“Master.” Potter bowed deeply enough that his fringe brushed the floor, and it didn’t look ironic, again.  
  
Draco licked his lips, surprised and revolted by the unnecessarily metallic taste on them, and moved back with a haughty, “See that it doesn’t,” that surprised even him. He swept into the sitting room, past the stunned goblins. He wanted to look over his shoulder and see whether Potter scraped to them, too, but he couldn’t manage it at the moment.  
  
There was a time when he would have thought his dearest wish was to see Potter kneeling to him, a time when he would have asked for that as a gift from the Dark Lord if he hadn’t known that his Lord had more delicious things in mind for Potter.  
  
 _But there was a time when I loved and believed in the Dark Lord, too._  
  
*  
  
Harry badly wanted to throw up, especially when he noticed that two of the goblins among the group of them in the Manor’s corridor were the ones who had eagerly anticipated his imprisonment in Gringotts because they had “special” jobs for him.  
  
But he had made promises, and he would put the Malfoys at risk, or at least their money, if he came this far and then refused to go further. Besides, this was only one more indignity to endure before he left the wizarding world. Soon he would be in a place where people kept their money in ordinary banks and thought of goblins as fairy tales to frighten children.  
  
So he walked, and flung himself down at Lucius’s feet in his chains, keeping his head bowed. He didn’t even look up or flinch when Lucius’s hand buried itself in the hair at the back of his neck, although he  _hated_ that.  
  
“You have behaved well, slave,” Lucius said. “You may lick the tip of my cane.” And the tip appeared in front of Harry.  
  
They hadn’t discussed this part, and Harry felt that terrible temptation welling up in him again that had been there from the first time the goblins pushed their price. He knew what his magic could do. Reach out, touch Lucius, and concentrate, and fabric would dissolve to its basest fibers, skin would slough from bone, bone would turn to ash…  
  
 _And that’s disgusting, and not something I want other people to associate with me. I want to walk away in pride, not driven be off by people screaming in terror._  
  
So Harry kept his magic and his hands to himself, and simply shivered, and extended his tongue. The floors around the Manor were kept impeccably clean, thanks to the house-elves. Harry doubted it would really taste worse than some of the things he had eaten at the Dursleys’.  
  
It didn’t. The cane tasted like smooth wood and a harder substance that Harry suspected was the ebony that sheathed it, and in any case, Lucius pulled it away the moment Harry had taken a single firm lick.  
  
“I find it best to limit the rewards that our slave has,” Lucius remarked, lounging back on the couch and smiling at the goblins. “That way, he cannot grow too used to his status and start thinking of himself as above us all, as above his  _crimes._ And we must teach him that riding a dragon out of Gringotts is a crime, must we not?”  
  
The goblins laughed, a sound like pans clashing, and Griphook said something that Harry knew he couldn’t listen to, because it would make him kill. So he huddled on the floor next to Lucius’s boots, and didn’t flinch when Lucius petted his neck or his scar, or let his hand fondle the middle of Harry’s back in a way that probably looked precariously exciting to the goblins.  
  
He would get through this. He would always get through this, and the Malfoys had spared him some of the things he might have had to do in the goblins’ power.  
  
But Merlin, he would be glad when this visit was over.  
  
*  
  
Draco was progressing rapidly from the revelation that he wouldn’t have wanted the Dark Lord to make Potter kneel, surprising enough in and of itself, to the one that said he didn’t want to see Potter kneeling to  _anyone_.  
  
He didn’t like it. It changed things, and he didn’t think that he wanted to be the kind of person who would change that much, whose mind  _could_ be changed by the sight of something as simple as a man falling on his knees. Or by the feel of Potter’s magic, constricted around him and breathing barely more than a vampire.  
  
It was…  
  
The thing, Draco thought wretchedly as the goblins prated on and his parents fed them story about story about the vague but lurid things that Potter supposedly did for them, was that Potter had always stood up to him.  _Stood_. He hadn’t been impressed by Draco’s parents. He had laughed at Draco’s claims to be superior based on blood. He had rolled his eyes and snorted in the right places, and he had turned his back and walked away during the times when Draco had most badly wanted him to bow.  
  
He had been a rival when Draco had most needed him, loathe though he was to think that he  _really_ needed one. A rival stood and fought and panted and only kneeled because you made him.  
  
It was Potter’s desire for freedom that bent him now, that and the desire to fall into place and go along with the plan. Nothing Draco had done. Nothing the Dark Lord had done, even. It was an interference from people who felt wronged by Potter, but not people who had been rivals with him, who had quested after the Snitch with him, who had argued over House points and taunted him about his parents.  
  
It was  _wrong_.  
  
Draco didn’t plan to explain this to anyone, because he knew his parents would reprimand him for being so incoherent and Potter had already proven that he didn’t understand the psychology of rivalry when Draco had tried to talk to him in the training room. But what mattered most of all was that this revelation was his own, and private, and no law said that he needed to share everything he thought with everybody.  
  
His Aunt Bellatrix had thought he did. The Dark Lord had wanted to know every thought that went through a Malfoy’s head. Maybe he even deserved to know the thoughts of the people he had Marked, by right of strength in Legilimency if nothing else.  
  
But no one was going to take Draco’s thoughts about Potter away.  
  
And if a Malfoy bowed to no one, then a Malfoy’s slave should only bow because a Malfoy had made him.  
  
*  
  
The visit was coming to an end. Harry could tell by the way the goblins shuffled their feet and cleared their throats, sounds familiar to him from visits at the Dursleys’ when Uncle Vernon’s clients would do the same things, and Harry listened to them from the cupboard. Lucius and Narcissa were probably running out of stories to tell them, at that.  
  
 _Good._ Harry could feel the insinuations and innuendos layered like slime over his skin. He wanted a bath.  
  
“Mistress Malfoy…”  
  
That was Griphook, one of the whiniest, as though he thought Harry owed him something for rescuing him from Malfoy Manor, or doing that and then tricking him. Harry stiffened with his eyes on the floor. Griphook would notice the gesture, of course, and that would only increase the price of whatever demand he was about to make.   
  
“Yes, Master Griphook?” Narcissa was so cool and gentle that Harry could hear no contempt in her tone, and he knew what to look for. He doubted that Griphook would notice. “Was there something?”  
  
“We never did get the full benefit of his services, and it sounds like he’s an exceptional slave,” Griphook said. “Would it be too much to require him to kiss our feet?”  
  
Harry felt the revulsion burst out shining anew in him. He had barely managed to kiss Lucius’s cane, and he thought he knew what would happen if he touched the goblins right now. His hands were burning, and as he watched, small, dark puddles spread out from them across the floor. Luckily, it was made of marble, and Harry could do nothing more than pit it a little, as the power in him reached out in search of organic material.  
  
“Well, I don’t know,” said Narcissa, and her voice had not changed, except that now it had taken on rather more of a tone of serious consideration. “We use that as a reward, you see, and I’m not sure he deserves it. Being allowed to kiss Lucius’s cane is more than he could have expected today, already.”  
  
Harry began to breathe again. Narcissa might have just prevented a series of murders that would have shaken the world and which Harry would have regretted, but was not sure that he could have stopped.  
  
“Oh, in  _that_ case.” Griphook sipped at his tea and set the cup down on the table. “In that case,” he repeated, standing up, “may I commend you on your excellent and unusual discipline, Mistress Narcissa? Of course, it sounds as though some disrespect remains to be extracted from him, if that scene we witnessed on the staircase is any indication. Please do let us know if you require any help in that endeavor.”  
  
“Oh, we will,” Narcissa said, and her voice was a thing of deep, cold beauty, that Harry thought he might have admired under other circumstances, and which only made the things she had hinted about him worse. “We more than appreciate it.”  
  
There came a shaking of hands, and the goblins bending down to examine him and the chains before they left. Harry bore it, his arms shaking with what they might assume was fear, but which Narcissa would know was the need to lash out.  
  
Finally, they were through the front door and away. Harry rose to his feet and reached out to rip the chains off.  
  
The glamours vanished at the same moment as the real chains they were built on unlocked and dropped to the floor. Narcissa Vanished them and raised an eyebrow at Harry. “Why don’t you go to your room for a while, dear?”  
  
Harry nodded shortly, and left. He couldn’t thank them right now. He hoped they would understand.


	6. Dealing and Dueling

_Chapter Six—Dealing and Dueling_  
  
“You can’t sulk in here forever.”  
  
Draco made his voice as bold and challenging as he could. In truth, he was a little unnerved that there were no wards on Potter’s rooms to keep him out. That didn’t seem like something his mother would have forgotten, so instead Potter had left them down. Draco didn’t know why.  
  
“I know,” Potter said, in an absolutely flat voice, his eyes on the ceiling. He lay on his back in the middle of the bed, and it made Draco’s skin prickle with irritation to see how his hands lay beside him, flat and helpless, not even knotting into fists. “I know it’s horrible. I’ll be down tomorrow.”  
  
And Potter turned his head away and closed his eyes.  
  
As far as Draco was concerned, that tore it.  
  
He marched across the floor towards Potter, who never seemed to notice him coming. He grabbed his shoulder and shook it, hard.   
  
Potter rolled back towards him and shot his own hand out. Draco tried to gasp around the wand suddenly poking into his throat, but he couldn’t. His breath stuck, and he couldn’t shake his head or speak the scornful words he wanted.  
  
“You bought me to play the part of a slave,” Potter said flatly. “That’s all well and good. I owe you a debt of gratitude. But I didn’t realize until today how hard it would be to play that part. I think you could at least have the  _courtesy_ to let me have some time to come to terms with it, instead of intruding and yelling at me.”  
  
Draco managed to swallow. Then he said, “You don’t understand. I think that you might get stuck like this forever. I’m just intervening to make sure you don’t. That you’ll remember there’s a world outside this room, and you’ll have to come back and be part of it sometime.”  
  
Potter continued to examine him. Draco stared back. What he had spoken was the truth, strange though it might seem to both Potter and his father to hear that. Draco thought his mother would understand, though.  
  
Then Potter shook his head and said, “I’ve dealt with shocks like this before. The prophecy and the Parseltongue and Sirius and—oh, lots of others. I can get used to it, but it takes me time. Give me that time, and I can master it.” He gave Draco a tired smile that seemed to surprise him almost as much as it did Draco, from the way his eyes crossed a moment later. “But you have to give me that time in quiet.”  
  
Draco thought about it for a minute, then nodded. As long he had  _some_ assurance that Potter would emerge from his rooms again and stand up to him, then he could give Potter the time he needed now.  
  
“All right,” he said. “As long as you come down tomorrow. And as long as you eat a full meal when Ren brings it to you.”  
  
“What are you, my keeper?” Potter asked, but his voice was already drowsy, his muscles relaxing. Draco rejoiced to see it. Potter had been too tense before, too caught up in the sick tension that could turn him into the killing predator Draco had seen in the bank, and again on the floor of his parents’ drawing room. “Ren will make sure I eat it, because he’ll whine until I do, otherwise.” He paused suddenly, and gave Draco a considering look. “Muggles think pets get to act like their masters, after a while. I wonder if the same thing happens between wizards and house-elves?”  
  
Draco made an appropriate spluttering noise, though more because Potter expected it than because he felt it. He found the insinuation less outrageous than the feeling that had passed through him as he watched Potter kneeling at his father’s feet. Nothing would surprise him again for a while, he thought, until he had regrown the nerves that that sight had seared.  
  
“Right,” Potter said, and his face had relaxed, too, his hands falling open on the bed. He hesitated, then added, “Thanks, Malfoy. See you tomorrow.”  
  
Draco nodded and retreated, closing the door behind him. After a moment, he put up a privacy ward on it, since Potter was obviously too much of an idiot to do it himself.  
  
He walked away with a spring in his step, to the training room, where he practiced some of the spells that Potter had successfully used against him this past week. He wanted to spread some of the surprise around when Potter felt well enough to come out of his confinement.  
  
*  
  
Harry came down the stairs slowly. He’d already eaten breakfast in his rooms, like dinner last night, but Ren had told him that Lucius wanted to see him. Without the excuse of a meal, Harry wondered what for.  
  
Lucius stood at the bottom of the stairs, in fact, the cane casually in his hand, examining one of the portraits with a frown on his face that made Harry wonder if some Muggle ancestor had crept in by mistake. Harry halted. It was the sight of the cane. It made it hard to move forwards, hard to catch his breath.  
  
Lucius turned around, saw him, and Vanished the cane after a long look at Harry. Harry sighed. He wondered if he should regret becoming so transparent to the Malfoys, and then decided that he didn’t. If it led to them caring for his comfort instead of him just having to suffer because they didn’t notice and he wouldn’t betray his weakness to them, then that would make him stronger in the future, by saving his strength for things that really mattered.  
  
“Come to my study,” Lucius said. He began to walk down the corridor, taking it for granted that Harry would follow. Harry rolled his eyes, and did, because it wasn’t worth making a fuss about.  
  
The study was so dark that Harry wished for a lamp other than the small one Lucius had lit on his desk. He couldn’t guarantee that he wouldn’t stumble over the small rugs on the floor or the sharp corners of the bookshelves otherwise. Somehow, though, he made it to the chair that sat in the middle of a brown-and-red rug, in front of Lucius’s desk, and took his seat with his hands folded in his lap. His heart was still beating faster than it should have from such a short walk, and he found it hard to look Lucius in the eye.  
  
The man was no Narcissa.  
  
“I have looked up the amounts of the weregilds paid in the past when someone killed a member of a prominent pure-blood family, as well as what a trained house-elf was worth,” Lucius said briskly, pulling the book in front of him open. Harry squinted, but the book was as dark as anything else in the room, bound in aged leather. If there was a title on the spine, or an author’s name, it had long ago been reduced to flakes of gilt. “The weregilds ranged in the amount of a thousand Galleons, slightly less than that if the victim was only crippled instead of killed. I think such an amount would be appropriate, don’t you, since the girl escaped in the end?” He looked up.  
  
Harry stared back into his face, and bit his tongue on what he wanted to say.  _This is comfortable for him. Thinking of people in terms of money. It makes it possible for him to deal with things that he would have no means to deal with otherwise, because they would be…too real, or something. Who the hell knows?_  
  
Anyway, Harry had agreed to let this go as far as it had, so it would be hypocritical of him to scold Lucius now for thinking of Ginny’s life in those terms. He cleared his throat, and said, “She only escaped because I rescued her, not because the diary you gave her let her go, or something.”  
  
“Then she owes you a life-debt,” Lucius said, and his eyes shone as he made a quick stroke across the parchment in front of him with a quill. “That makes her life further valuable to you, and exempts me from paying as much as I would have if she were crippled. Now, subtracting the amount that you owe me for my elf, I end up with two hundred Galleons. Is that fair?” He sat back and looked at Harry.  
  
 _I could refuse,_ Harry thought, but he didn’t want to. This was the man who had helped him to play out a successful deception yesterday, and given up one of his vaults to secure Harry’s freedom—well, eventual freedom—even if that was by way of paying back a life-debt. Harry nodded, and let it go.  
  
“Good.” Lucius twirled the quill between his fingers. “We must think of a different deception, one that will allow you to communicate with your friends and venture outside the Manor on occasion. I think you will suffer without those.”  
  
Harry blinked. Then he reminded himself where Lucius was coming from. It wasn’t that a sudden fit of compassion had overcome him; it was that Harry not having those things made Harry act in ways that inconvenienced Lucius, and might do more than inconvenience him when it came to the goblins.  
  
“Yes, I will,” Harry said. “I thought that having my messages taken by some bird other than an owl would help with the deception.”  
  
Lucius smiled, his eyes alight. “I know where one can acquire trained ravens—trained, as well, in making it seem as though their deliveries do not happen. Please allow me to buy one and present it as a gift to you.”  
  
Harry sighed out a little. “Fine. And venturing outside?”  
  
“The Manor’s wards cannot be turned opaque,” Lucius said, standing. “A condition of the Ministry’s allowing us to keep them at all, after the trial. But I may think of something else. In the meantime, why don’t you go practice dueling with my son? He was whining enough about it last night that I don’t want to listen to any more of it.”  
  
Harry blinked a little at the abrupt dismissal, but part of him was grateful for it, too. He and Lucius weren’t friends, and it was good to remember that when he seemed inclined to forget it. He stood up, swayed a little, put his hands on the desk to brace himself, and said, “You’re being generous.”  
  
“Narcissa reminded me that I should be.”  
  
Harry nodded back, and left the study under his own power, which was far better than being propelled out of it, the way he had assumed he would be if he had any sort of private conversation with Lucius.   
  
And he didn’t have far to walk before he stumbled over Draco, lurking in the corridor with an air of nonchalance that Harry could have told him didn’t look any better on him than it did on a house-elf.  _He and Ren are definitely alike,_ Harry thought, as he nodded to Draco.  
  
“Do you want to go practice?” he asked.  
  
Draco’s face lit up. Harry blinked. That seemed a reaction out of all proportion to the request.  
  
Then he shook his head.  _I asked him, instead of making him ask. I think he likes that._  
  
And Harry liked seeing him that way. Far better than he liked seeing Malfoy sulky or insulting him, at least. When Draco said something in a low, grateful tone, Harry nodded to him and began walking towards the practice room. His head still had a few cobwebs from his encounter with Lucius, and the scene last night. He would do better when he was dueling, and pumping adrenaline through his muscles.  
  
*  
  
Potter was  _incredibly_ good at dueling.  
  
Draco sometimes looked at him and despaired that he would ever be good—mostly when he was trying to recover his breath from one of Potter’s spells. But then he remembered who he had teaching him, and took heart.  
  
Of course, that was right before Potter hit him with a complicated spell that made him start breathing as though someone had kicked him in the solar plexus, and he had to spend the next five minutes bent over while Potter explained how to counter it.  
  
 _He’s good at teaching, too,_ Draco had to admit, as he watched him out of the corner of his eye. Potter didn’t seem to comprehend that Draco might resent him for succeeding in a duel. He simply explained what had gone wrong, with enough gentle, graceful gestures that Draco could imagine what it would be like when  _he_ could hit the spell back at Potter with enough skill to leave him lying flat on the floor.  
  
 _Maybe. I haven’t exactly got to that point yet._  
  
But neither was he defeated, and when he managed to counter Potter’s  _Fractas_ with a shield that held up under it instead of splitting into pieces, he won another reward. Potter gave him a slow, genuine smile that seemed to hold nothing in reserve. Draco stared, dazzled, before he became aware that he  _was_ staring, and guiltily averted his eyes.  
  
“Very good,” Potter said. “I think you’re really concentrating now, and that makes up for that slipshod technique that so many people pick up because they’re trying to be flashy, and don’t have the first idea of how to do it.”  
  
“Including some you trained with?” Draco guessed.  
  
Potter gave him a quick nod. “There are  _so_ many people who care more about how they  _look_ when they’re throwing a spell than about how the spell lands,” he complained, tossing his fringe out of his eyes. Draco wondered why he didn’t just cut his hair, if it annoyed him so much, but that wasn’t his business. Learning from Potter was. “There’s just not enough room for them in a serious training program.”  
  
“You’ll revolutionize the Aurors when you go there,” Draco predicted. “You probably already know more than half the teachers.”  
  
Potter’s face froze for a moment, while his magic writhed around him like a snake on fire, and then he shook his head. “Maybe I would, if I was going to go there,” he muttered.  
  
Draco blinked. “You’re still seriously thinking about leaving the wizarding world when the year is up?” Potter had mentioned that once or twice, but Draco hadn’t taken it seriously. Why would he? Real wizards had to be with their own kind, and from the hints and snippets and rumors he’d picked up floating around about Potter’s childhood, Potter had no reason to love his Muggle relatives, and therefore no reason to love Muggles.  
  
“Because there’s nothing left for me here, except my friends, and I can owl them,” Potter said. “Or raven them.” He visibly brightened. “Your father’s going to get me a raven so I can reach Ron and Hermione without anyone suspecting.”  
  
“That’s a generous gift,” Draco said. He didn’t know why he said it, except from a vague desire, he reckoned, to see how Potter would respond.  
  
Potter gave Draco a look that he didn’t know how to interpret. “I know it is,” he said. “Your family has been incredibly generous.” He shifted his stance and pointed his wand at Draco again. “Do you want to continue?”  
  
“If you’ll tell me what that chill in your voice means,” Draco said, still stubbornly holding onto his wand rather than lifting it to the ready. “Why should it matter to you that my family’s generous?” Then he saw the way Potter’s mouth curled, and amended it quickly to, “Why should it  _bother_ you that we’re generous, when that worked out to your advantage?”  
  
Potter seemed to spend a long moment pondering, although Draco hadn’t known he could think so deeply. He had obviously thought about dueling, but his gift seemed half-instinctive, and in Draco’s experience, people who followed instincts were like his Aunt Bellatrix: not great thinkers, even if they were brilliant.  
  
Finally, Potter said, “Gratitude always places you on a lower plane. You can never be equal to the person who gave you the gift, unless you can do something for them in return. And I can’t do anything for you.”  
  
 _And he’d be sensitive about being lower,_ Draco thought, remembering the way Potter had almost torn off his chains when the goblins left. “Potter—”  
  
But Potter shook his head violently and gestured him forwards, and Draco obediently lifted his wand again. They were here to duel, not to have insightful revelations into each other, and he  _did_ want to learn dueling from Potter.  
  
The other skill, he was already proving to himself that he knew how to do on his own.


	7. Ravens and Demonstrations

Harry studied the raven that Lucius had rented for him, or bought for him, or something. He knew that it had made at least one successful trip to Ron and Hermione, because he could see the letter clutched in its beak.  
  
But it didn’t want to come to him. Instead, it preened its feathers and hopped about on the table in his rooms, and every time Harry made a move towards it, it would pick up the letter and move away. That included every time Harry raised his wand. The one time so far he’d tried to Summon it, the raven had gripped the corner of the envelope in its beak and the other corner in one claw, and looked as if it would tear it in half.  
  
Harry snorted.  _You would have been a damn stupid Auror if you’d let yourself be outsmarted by a bloody bird._  
  
That just reminded him that he would never go back to being an Auror or an Auror candidate, though, and then that he was a slave, and everyone thought they could lord it over him, even a raven.  
  
 _Not Draco._  
  
But his dueling lessons with Draco were one of the things he wanted to discuss with Ron and Hermione, so Harry focused on the bird and lifted his wand again. The raven tensed, but what he floated off the tray was a scrap of cheese left behind from lunch. Harry ate most of his meals with Narcissa now, but sometimes he still wanted something in his rooms. He’d eaten lunch up here today anticipating that the raven might come back.  
  
The glossy black bird tilted its head back hungrily, watching the cheese and fluffing its feathers out. Then it took off, winging towards the cheese while carrying the envelope along with it.  
  
Harry flicked his wand again, and the cheese looped back towards him. The raven flew in a circle just outside the point where he could have grabbed the letter, but Harry kept the food close enough to him that the raven couldn’t snatch  _it,_ either. They watched each other, the raven’s wingbeats the loudest sound in the room.  
  
“What about if we trade?” Harry offered. He felt a bit silly speaking to a bird that way, but on the other hand, post-owls were smart enough to find people just by being told their names, and the same thing seemed to be true of the raven. It had also known what his Summoning Charm meant. “On three. We toss.”  
  
The raven watched with a bright eye. Harry shook his head. But he was confident he was quick enough with spells to pull the cheese back in time if it turned out the raven absolutely wouldn’t surrender the letter.  
  
“One,” Harry said, and drifted the cheese above his head. The raven flew in another circle, but Harry thought he saw the claws loosen a little. “Two.” The raven flew higher, at the level of the cheese. “ _Three_.” And Harry released his spell so that the cheese dropped towards the floor at his feet.  
  
The raven let go of the letter at the same time, and Harry had it safely in his hand before it could reach the cheese. When the raven touched the cheese, it took it to the table and began loftily nibbling it as if that had been its plan all along.  
  
Harry shook his head. “At least you’ll have me exercising spells outside the dueling room,” he muttered, and tore open the letter.  
  
 _Dear Harry,_  
  
 _I’m so happy to hear what’s going on, and that you’re managing some semblance of a normal life with the Malfoys. Of course, it could never be the same thing as being free and with us, but if this is what it takes to keep you safe and away from what the goblins had planned for you, then I’m grateful to them._  
  
 _We’ll write you as often as we can, of course. Right now, the wizarding world seems pretty quiet. There are a few people who are upset that you weren’t given over to the goblins, but the goblins themselves report “satisfaction” with the way they saw you treated by the Malfoys and say they have no intention of closing the bank. I hope the Malfoys didn’t make you do anything too awful!_  
  
 _Ron wants to add something to this letter, so I’ll end it right here. Just—keep safe, and I hope you’re happy, and tell us everything that’s going on. Love, Hermione._  
  
The writing switched to Ron’s rough scrawl. Harry felt the bed behind him and sat down. He couldn’t seem to stop smiling.  
  
 _Mate!_  
  
 _I’m not happy that the Malfoys had to take you, either, but I’m glad that it’s worked out so far. If you need someone to curse them, when you’re not allowed to do it, then say the word. I’d half-like to see how my dueling skills measure up to someone like Lucius Malfoy. They say that he was one of the best Death Eaters, but I bet that I’m better. You were the one who trained me, after all._  
  
Harry paused. He would have to be careful about how much he revealed with the dueling lessons with Draco, he thought. He didn’t want Ron to feel like he was less special just because Harry was now giving lessons to someone else.  
  
 _How’s Malfoy’s mother? There were some people going around saying in the papers that she’s an even bigger bastard than Malfoy_ and  _his dad combined, and that she would come up with the best things to do to you to make sure you paid the debt._  
  
Harry snorted. He  _would_ tell the truth about Narcissa, for the sheer pleasure of imagining the look on Ron’s face when he did.  
  
 _And what kind of food are you getting there? Mum frets that they aren’t feeding you properly because they think you’re a slave. Say the word, and she’ll send over half a dozen cakes and all these hard sweets she’s been making._  
  
 _I hope you write back soon. It’s driving me mad not to know what you’re up to in there, and not to be with you and see you all the time. Love, Ron._  
  
Harry closed his eyes. He’d like to see Ron and Hermione. The longing made his teeth ache with it, as if his jaw was sore. He absently reached up and felt at them to make sure that wasn’t the case.  
  
But he just—wasn’t allowed, that was all. That was the way things were. That was the way things would have to remain for the moment.  
  
Someone knocked on his door. Harry stood up and made sure that his wand was in his hand. The raven called smugly and flew out the window, back to the private aerie that Lucius had apparently built for it. Harry shook his head. When the birds that delivered his post were getting better treatment than he was, he—  
  
The knock came again, and the impatient edge to it told Harry well enough who it was. He held his smile as he opened the door, because they didn’t need a quarrel just now. “Yes, Draco?” he asked.  
  
Draco walked into the room without seeming to notice the letter on the table behind Harry, which was more reprieve than Harry had thought he would have. “Get your imaginary chains on,” he said. “We’re going to Diagon Alley, and you’re going to try out bodyguard duty.”  
  
*  
  
Draco kept a narrow eye on Potter as they moved through the crowds swirling around Diagon Alley. He hadn’t told Potter why they had come here so abruptly, because he didn’t know himself. Well, he didn’t know in the sense that he couldn’t have said for certain, and he would have testified as much under Veritaserum.  
  
But he knew it had something to do with his father’s contacts—in other realms than the Ministry, this time. The Ministry had taken his father’s independence and part of the Malfoy fortune, and Lucius intended to punish them by finding more wealth and power elsewhere. They were going to meet someone who could help him do that.  
  
And that person had probably asked to see Lucius’s heir and their family’s new slave, as well.  
  
So far, Draco had to admit, Potter was a better actor than he’d thought. He didn’t look quite as ill as he had when the goblins were around him, either. He kept his head up and slid through the people around them like a shark through waves, ignoring the way they usually turned to stare once they caught a glimpse of his scar. His hand was always on his wand. His field of vision always included both Draco and his father.   
  
Someone would probably think he was a trained bodyguard. It made Draco wonder just what they  _did_ teach during Auror training, and how many of the techniques they portrayed as special and secret and just for the trainees could be profitably applied elsewhere.  
  
Potter could do several things.  
  
 _If he intended to stay in the wizarding world._  
  
Draco frowned. Yes, that one was rather the sticking point. Every time he alluded to the future in their dueling lessons, Potter always spoke of the next year, and anything Draco ventured beyond that point met with silence. Potter didn’t want to tell Draco what he intended to do in the Muggle world, how he intended to live when he had no real credentials and his life and friends were here.  
  
 _I hate to see potential going to waste._ That was the only way Draco could explain his interest, anyway. He didn’t want to see Potter kneel to anyone, and he didn’t want to watch him vanish into the Muggle world and lose every chance he might have to recover his freedom and prestige. Draco would like to see him rub the goblins’ noses, and the nose of anyone who hadn’t supported him, in the shine of his glittering new life.  
  
But Potter himself didn’t seem to care about that. And Draco could hardly take revenge for someone who didn’t want him to.  
  
He pondered, and watched, and stepped straight into someone in front of him, a tall wizard hurrying along with a wooden box under his arm. The end of the box came unhinged as Draco watched, and bright blue eggs slid to the ground, shattering on the cobblestones. Draco whisked his robes away from the spreading mess of yolk.  
  
The wizard turned around. His hand was on his wand already, but he went still and stared when he saw Draco. Perhaps it was his face, or perhaps it was his age; the next moment, the wizard had turned to his father, after all. Draco lifted his chin and strove to look unconcerned. Perhaps he was twining his hands together, but that didn’t mean that he was  _nervous_. Only someone ignorant of who he was would conclude that.  
  
And it didn’t seem as though the man was ignorant of who they were, after all.  
  
“Are you going to pay for this, Malfoy?” he asked, heaving the box. A few last eggs slid out and smashed on the cobbles. Draco stiffened. If it was him, he would at least have  _tried_ to save his precious Potions ingredients, or whatever they were. But this particular man never took his eyes from Lucius’s face. “Or are you going to make your brat do it?”  
  
His father’s face went tight in a way that made Draco have trouble breathing. Then his father bowed his head, bowed in turn over the cane that he carried when they were in public, and opened his mouth to speak.  
  
He didn’t get the chance to.  
  
“Master.”  
  
It was Potter’s voice, far flatter and more servile, because devoid of emotion, than it had been in front of the goblins. Of course, Draco thought, as he watched people turn around at the sound of the word, they had a larger audience this time.  
  
“Yes, Potter?” Lucius sounded unconcerned, but the wizard started and stared at Potter for the first time, apparently seeking the scar under his fringe.  
  
Potter had knelt down next to the eggs, his chains clinking. He dipped his fingers into the yolk and held them up, dripping, with shards of shell twined among his fingers. “I recognize these eggs, Master,” he said. “They had a section on them in Auror training. They’re miniature dragon eggs.”  
  
Draco choked. Miniature dragons were a species so rare that most of them only existed in private collections now, where the wizards breeding them hoped to release them back into sanctuaries someday. He had heard that they would lay large numbers of eggs in captivity, but few of those eggs were fertile, although it was hard to tell which ones were infertile until they failed to hatch.   
  
“Illegal to trade?” Lucius asked as if he wasn’t sure, like Draco, that they were.  
  
Potter bowed his head. “Yes, Master. Except to registered breeders.”  
  
The sound of his voice, and the expression on his face, what little Draco could see of it, made Draco want to haul Potter to his feet and slap him. Yes, he  _needed_ to be respectful when he spoke to a Malfoy. That didn’t  _actually_ mean the Malfoy would hurt him forever if he wasn’t. Potter was being ridiculous.  
  
 _This charade is more for the audience than for us, and you know it._  
  
Draco didn’t know where his mind got off being  _reasonable_ at him. He scowled at Potter anyway, since everyone who saw would probably assume he just didn’t like Potter, or resented him for causing this kind of scene.  
  
Lucius turned back to the wizard with the box. “Did you know this fact?” he asked, all grave and courteous, making Draco want to swallow a laugh now. “I am more than willing to pay for them, but I want to know if it will be legal or black market value.”  
  
The wizard glanced sharply over Lucius’s head, in the direction of what Draco thought might well be scarlet Auror robes. Then he shook his head and said, “I’m inclined to let it go.  _This_ time,” he added quickly.  
  
Potter raised his head. His eyes seemed to memorize the wizard’s face. Then they moved downwards, and he was on his feet and between the wizard and Draco.  
  
Draco blinked. The movement had happened so fast he’d missed it. Of course, that was probably a good thing in a bodyguard. If Potter moved so fast that he surprised the people he was guarding, that meant he would probably surprise the ones attacking them, too.  
  
The wizard stumbled back a step and said, “Is this how you allow your slaves to treat free men, Malfoy?”  
  
“When you aim your wand elsewhere,” Potter said, voice like granite, “then I’ll go back to minding my master’s business.  _Sir._ ”  
  
Draco looked down. Yes, the wizard had held his wand pointed towards Draco. It was subtle, concealed within his sleeve. He had no idea how Potter had seen it.  
  
 _I need to learn what he knows. I don’t want to fail at protecting myself when he’s gone._  
  
The wizard stepped back. Then he shook his head and said, “Slaves should know their place.”  
  
“I know mine.” Potter didn’t seem as though he intended to let his gaze waver. “Between the Malfoys and danger.”  
  
Draco blinked at nothing. That was a more explicit answer than he had thought he would get, even given the charade. He wished he could lean forwards and look at Potter’s face right now without it being obvious, because he wanted to see what expression he was wearing and how genuine it was.  
  
The wizard backed further away, and Potter flexed his hand around his wand, then moved out in front of Draco again.  
  
Draco and his father exchanged glances. For one of the few times in his life, though, Draco discovered that he didn’t know what Lucius was thinking simply from the expression on his face. He had turned around to look at Potter again too quickly for that, at least when his expression was so complex.  
  
Draco nibbled his lip thoughtfully as he trailed after Potter. Maybe, if Potter meant anything of the sentiment he’d just expressed, then Draco would have an easier time persuading him to stay in the wizarding world.  
  
*  
  
Harry pressed his forehead against the wall of the shower, and stood there until even the enchanted water sluicing over his back and hair threatened to turn cold. Then he straightened and pulled back, shaking his head as he turned off the shower and wrapped his towel around himself.  
  
He didn’t understand, no. He didn’t understand how everyone was fooled by the simple act he had put on. He didn’t understand why the people who had said they supported him hadn’t come up to in Diagon Alley or protested; there had been people who turned away, but that wasn’t the same thing. He didn’t understand the way Malfoy Father and Son had stared at him for the rest of that trip to Diagon Alley.  
  
He had played out the act. He had done as he had to.  
  
It still left him feeling as though someone had coated his skin with a thin film of slime.  
  
Harry dressed in the plain pyjamas that Ren had left him and sat down on the end of his bed. He could feel weariness weighing his eyelids down—it always did, when he’d spent hours with his nerves tuned to the pitch of alertness like that—but he knew he wouldn’t be able to sleep if he lay back now. His skin shuddered and shivered along his nerves, and he wanted to throw up and knew that he wouldn’t be able to work enough spit into his mouth to do so.  
  
He didn’t  _want_ this.  
  
But Malfoy probably hadn’t wanted to sacrifice a vault to rescue him, either, Harry thought, lying back after all. (Maybe it would be different in his  _slave_ bed than in his own). Harry hadn’t asked him to, but the deed was done, and they weren’t being horrible to him when things were in private.  
  
He had enough to eat, enough to wear, things to do to keep him from going mad with boredom. It was more than he had ever had at the Dursleys’. His memories of the past told him to shut up and be grateful.  
  
His sense of reality told him to be glad that he hadn’t turned the man in the Alley today into a pile of grey mush. His magic had risen to the surface in fury, and the man would have been an admirable target.  
  
Then Harry sighed. No, admirable only in the sense that it would have been a release for his fury. He  _knew_ that he couldn’t simply unleash his magic like that. If the wizarding world got wind of what he could really do to anyone with skin and flesh and bone, then they wouldn’t demand that he become a slave. They would demand that he be locked up, or used as a weapon, and his freedom would never be in sight again.  
  
Someone knocked on his door.  
  
Harry kept his head bowed as he laughed, because seriously, what was this, a day to repeat everything? Regrets, and words, and encounters with Malfoy?  
  
But he kept knocking, and wouldn’t go away, and after all, Harry was a slave in the Manor, with no real right to keep the door shut if Draco wanted to open it. So he got up and opened it. That much freedom, he could at least preserve.  
  
Draco stepped into the room. For once, though, he didn’t glare around as though wondering what each of the furnishings had cost and whether Harry was worthy of that cost, or shake him, or demand dueling lessons immediately. He just watched Harry thoughtfully. Harry threw his head back and folded his arms to encounter the gaze; he couldn’t pretend to be calm, so he would just be defiant instead. That ought to square with things.  
  
“Did you mean what you said?” Draco asked at last.  
  
“I said a lot of things,” Harry said. “And if you’re asking about all the master and sir business, then  _no_.”  
  
Draco flinched from the lash of magic that followed the words. Harry held his breath for a second. He honestly hadn’t meant to send so much out. He wondered if Draco had felt the power eating for a moment at his skin and fingernails, tearing them apart, rending at him. It wouldn’t be his fault if he had. It would be Harry’s.  
  
 _Keep yourself under control._ He told himself that, again and again, but it never seemed to work. He wondered if he would have had as much trouble if he was a slave of the actual goblins. Maybe they would have provided less pleasant surroundings to remind him, and that would have made him keep his temper in check.  
  
But perhaps it would have resulted in someone’s death instead, probably when he tried to make Harry lick his boots. He couldn’t know.  
  
“I meant—I meant that bit about standing between the Malfoys and danger.” Draco’s color was high, his eyes measuring the distance between Harry and the door.  
  
“What?” Harry stared at him. It seemed the strangest thing for Draco to pick up on.  
  
But the fear was real, so Harry turned and went back to the bed. He sat down, put his head between his hands, and thought of all the flying he would do when he was free of this world, at last. He would go up into the clouds, and he would never come down until he was ready to go to Muggle London and seek a new life. Maybe he would fly to Ireland, or to the Continent. The wind scrubbing his face, the sharp sting on his cheeks and in his ears, his hands gripping the broom while the silence sang to him.  
  
He filled his mind with the sensation, and finally looked up. Draco still stood in place, although he’d cocked a leg backwards. Harry recognized one of the dueling stances he’d taught him, and almost smiled.  
  
“I meant it at the time,” he said. “It was the sort of thing that someone would probably expect me to say, if I took the bodyguard duties seriously and agreed that I should be a slave.”  
  
Draco frowned. “Oh.”  
  
“Why that word?” Harry pulled his legs in close to him and thought of the way he would rise on the broom, spinning and dodging and not caring what anyone back on the ground said about it being dangerous. He would have survived something far more dangerous, at least to his spirit and soul, after passing through the slave ordeal.  
  
“Because I hoped if you meant it that it would be easier to persuade you to stay in the wizarding world,” Draco admitted. Harry blinked at him. “I don’t want you to go,” Draco said, and turned as red as if he’d made a love confession.  
  
“Why not?” Harry asked, mystified. “I’m sure you can find someone to help you continue your training after I leave.”  
  
Draco shook his head. “It’s not that,” he said. “I—want you to stay here. You shouldn’t let them drive you away.”  
  
Harry tried to control his laughter, but it came out anyway, gravel laughter, grave laughter, harsh and hard and high. Draco jumped and backed away another step, but Harry saw the look in his eyes.  _That was the way Voldemort would have laughed,_ it said.  
  
And Harry agreed, but he was too tired to hide what he thought anymore, or to let fear stop him.  
  
“You think they’re driving me away,” he whispered, bowing his head. “I  _hate_ this. I would have died before I agreed to become a slave, if it wasn’t that the goblins threatened everyone. And then no one spoke up except my friends when I agreed to put a collar on. They could have agreed with me that it had to be done and still said it was a shame. But they all kept quiet. They were afraid.  
  
“When I’ve done this, then the debt is paid. I’ll have done everything they could ask of me, all the people who think I owe them something for their adoration. I’ll  _go_. That’s the only thing I can ask now, that’s the only thing I can think about, and the only thing I can live for.” He lifted his hands, watching Draco stare at the bones and the veins in the backs of them. “My magic can melt people’s flesh and bone when I get angry enough. That started when those former Death Eaters were attacking me right after the war. The Healers say my rage condensed and turned my magic into  _something else_.” He took a deep breath, feeling again the way the Healers had backed away from him in fear and wonder, and the way he had carried his magic around like a nest of spiders about to hatch inside him. It wasn’t all his magic, but it was enough to taint his magic.   
  
“I don’t ever  _want_ to be that angry again,” Harry finally continued. "But as long as I stay in the wizarding world, I will be, because I’ll always run into someone who thinks that I owe them something. I need to break free. Going to the Muggle world is the only way I can.”  
  
He wound down. It hadn’t taken that long, after all, to say what had brewed in him, to spill the poison. Harry sighed and reached for the letter Ron and Hermione had sent him again. “Right now, I want to answer my post, and then I want to sleep,” he whispered. “Go away, Draco. Please.”  
  
The opening and shutting of the door said his wish had been granted.


	8. Attention Attracted

Lucius, on his way past the sitting room on the second floor, paused and turned back to look in. His son sat there alone, his elbows propped on his knees, his eyes blank as he stared into the fire.  
  
Lucius tapped the cane thoughtfully against the floor for a moment, and then strode in. Draco turned his head to acknowledge him, but did not rise to his feet and nod to his father respectfully as he usually did. Lucius didn’t need that, so instead he stood in front of the fire and tried to figure out what was wrong by studying Draco.  
  
Draco stirred restlessly before too long a time had passed. Lucius hid his smile. Draco had never been good at the arts that required sitting still, and Lucius supposed that he could not blame him. Draco was far more light and air and motion than Lucius or even Narcissa were; Lucius had never played Seeker.  
  
“What do you do when you find out that you don’t  _want_ someone to submit?” Draco asked him.  
  
Lucius blinked and stared at him. Of all the things that should concern Draco, he thought, it would be the one that he wouldn’t have imagined with a hundred years to guess.  
  
“You know that this simulacrum of slavery is only temporary,” he said quietly. “And when it is done, then Potter will be gone.”  
  
Draco’s hands clenched when he spoke the words, and Lucius paused, turning his head so that Draco would see only a smooth side of a profile while he worked out what that meant.  _Oh. So it is like_ that,  _is it?_  
  
And this, perhaps, he could have guessed. Draco had been denied a successful rivalry and friendship, both, with Potter. Nor had they ever met in a formal duel or arranged a bargain between themselves the way Potter and Lucius had settled on the weregild. So when Draco saw Potter in a new context, it made sense for his mind to turn to this way of settling the matter.  
  
“If you do not wish to see someone submit,” Lucius said, “then you are a different kind of man than the Dark Lord was.”  
  
Draco bowed his head. Lucius thought he could feel his wife’s approving gaze through the walls. Sometimes, not often, but sometimes, he said the words right the first time.  
  
“But there are ways of making a partnership joyous,” Lucius added. “When I was courting your mother, I had no success in making her look at me with liking until I brought her joy, instead of simply trying to impress her.”  
  
Draco looked up swiftly. “But you never had—I mean, Mother was interested in  _normal_ things. Not just dueling all the time.”  
  
Lucius turned his hands palm-up, neither agreeing nor disagreeing. “I still had to find out what she was interested in. I mistook it for Muggle-baiting, house-elves, and the pride of her family before I found out what it was. The process of discovery will teach you much about the person you want to court.” Perhaps better to go no further than that word for now.  
  
Draco bit his lip, looking at him. “So you didn’t have any clues?”  
  
Lucius smiled. “Very good, Draco. Yes. At that time, her parents were alive, and I asked her father what she would like. And before she ran away to marry a Mudblood, Andromeda Tonks showed some good sense. She advised me what Narcissa might like as well.”  
  
“Potter has no family to ask about that, though,” Draco muttered, half-petulant.  
  
“Then I suggest you ask his friends,” Lucius said, and as Draco stared at him in horrified disbelief, turned his head further to show Draco only his profile, and not the small smile tugging at his jaw.   
  
*  
  
Harry felt better when he’d written back to Ron and Hermione, a great torrent of complaints and huffing and explanations about why he continued to stay with the Malfoys instead of just breaking free and going elsewhere. Well, of course they knew why, because it was the same reasoning that he would have used if it was the goblins holding the leash, but it felt good to get it out.  
  
That done, and a short nap behind him, he decided that he might as well go down for dinner. He doubted anyone but Narcissa would bother to meet him. Well, that was okay. He could deal with a lot of food and not much conversation.  
  
But the whole Malfoy family was around the table when Harry walked in. Harry ignored the impulse to retreat and served himself from the side table: poached eggs, fresh fruit, fresh salad. It was what he felt like. The house-elves had probably already served the Malfoys, but the elves were showing a tendency to be extremely confused about what they should do with Harry, who wasn’t a house-elf, but also wasn’t technically a master, and in the end, Harry and Narcissa had agreed not to bother them about meals.  
  
Harry sat down in his chair and took a bite. Then he looked up, because Draco was making a motion across the table.  
  
Draco was pushing a glass of pumpkin juice at him.  
  
Harry stared. No house-elf had popped up in the room—he would have heard it—which meant Draco must have poured the glass himself. Not hard when the jug of pumpkin juice stood right by his hand, but still. It was unusual.  
  
Harry nodded slowly and took the glass from Draco, refreshing himself with a small swallow. He kept watching the Malfoys, though, ready to move if it turned out that something was wrong here. He didn’t think they would  _hurt_ him, but Draco was staring at Harry and apparently holding his breath, while Lucius went on eating his dinner and Narcissa—hid a smile?  
  
Harry wondered for a moment if the pumpkin juice was part of a joke, but he honestly didn't think Narcissa would do something like that to him. Among other things, it didn't seem like it would fit him into the family, and Narcissa wanted that, for reasons that had yet to make sense to Harry. So he enjoyed his juice, and his breakfast, and tried to ignore the fact that Draco looked like he was sitting on the edge of his seat.  
  
*  
  
 _He didn't even say thank you._  
  
Draco didn't put his head down in his hands and sigh, but only because he knew that would be silly, would earn him Harry's scorn and his father's, and would make his mother look at him mildly under her eyelashes. He sat back, nursed his own tea, and thought about the other things he had sometimes seen Harry enjoying.  
  
 _Privacy. Flight. Quidditch. His friends' company. Certain kinds of sweets. Beating up Slytherins._  
  
And none of those were in Draco's power to give him. Draco checked another sigh and watched Harry eat his grapes one by one, as though they might betray him and scurry off to the corners of the table if he chewed them faster. Draco bit his lip thoughtfully and wondered if something else to eat would help. He had thought Harry enjoyed some kinds of sweets; could he remember specific ones?  
  
A cudgeling of his brain made him remember that sometimes Harry came back from Hogsmeade with a certain box of chocolates from Zonko's. Draco waited until the end of dinner and then escaped as the elves cleared the table, heading straight for the Owlery and mentally counting the Galleons he kept in his bedroom drawers. The chocolates were certain to be expensive.  
  
Well, that made them all the more suitable as a gift for a Malfoy to give someone whose attention he wanted to attract.  
  
*  
  
Harry's attempt to bribe the raven with cheese was more successful this time, and it settled on top of the headboard and ate in contentment while he tore open the letters it had carried.  
  
 _Dear Harry,_ Hermione had written,  
  
 _I wish I knew what to tell you. The Malfoys do seem like they're treating you decently, but decent treatment as a slave is no substitute for having your freedom back. Is there any way they could extend their wards and glamours around the gardens, so that you could at least go out for exercise without being seen? It doesn't seem like it should be impossible. I know they want to avoid trouble with the goblins, but they're going to have trouble with_ you  _if you don't get some fresh air soon._  
  
Harry grinned. Hermione was always phrasing things the way Harry wished he had. He would show the letter to Narcissa. Maybe she could think of something that would persuade Lucius.  
  
Ron's letter included several creative suggestions for revenge that made Harry sigh over it. He wished Ron had thought of that when Harry was in danger from the goblins. They were the ones he blamed for this current situation, not the Malfoys. The Malfoys were just the ones making it difficult.  
  
Someone knocked on his bedroom door. Harry stood up with his wand in his hand, anticipating another visit from Draco to arrange a practice duel, and then realized the tapping came from the window instead. He turned around.  
  
A magnificent owl hovered there, grey with streaks of white on its wings. Harry would have been already calling to Lucius if he hadn't recognized the bird as one from the Malfoy Owlery. It did make him wonder what the family had to tell him that they couldn't have sent a house-elf with, but he went to open the window anyway.  
  
The owl flew in and alighted on his bed, staring at him expectantly. Harry rolled his eyes and reached for the letter it carried.  
  
But it wasn't a letter. It was a package, a rectangular, almost flat box from Zonko's. Harry stared at it, and then his eyes gradually narrowed and his heart rate picked up. It was a box of Wizard's Wands, which he hadn't tasted since his sixth year at Hogwarts.  
  
 _Someone is fucking with me._  
  
The owl hooted and flinched through all the spells Harry cast on it, spells that were meant to detect the multiple kinds of hexes you could put on food. But the chocolates were still intact at the end of it, although the box looked a bit battered. Harry looked down at it and bit his lip. Perhaps it was what it seemed to be, a peace offering.   
  
He would still ask the Malfoys about it, of course. They were the only ones who could have sent it, but it seemed strange they would have. Unless Draco was continuing whatever plot had begun with pouring him the pumpkin juice that morning.  
  
 _A strange plot to involve so much food._  
  
Harry dismissed the owl, which hovered outside the window for a few minutes until it realized he was really giving it no message to take back, and then vanished with a disapproving shriek. That left Harry to bite his lip and keep staring at the box before he flipped open the lid and undid the expensive, gold-colored wrapping on the inside.  
  
The chocolate wands inside had dozens of different kinds of tastes, though unlike Every-Flavor Beans, Harry actually found most of them appealing. He picked up a hazelnut one and closed his eyes as the sweetness seared his tongue.  
  
Yes, he would have to ask Draco about this.  
  
*  
  
"So, I know you sent chocolates to me. I just don't know  _why_ , or why you picked expensive ones that you knew I liked."  
  
Draco had just come in through the door to the dueling practice room, and it seemed stupid to walk right back out again, even though Harry’s words made him want to. He settled for folding his arms and frowning at Harry, who frowned back.  
  
“The answer is in the words you just spoke, idiot,” Draco finally said. He would have to hope that Harry wouldn’t require wooing with sweet words. “What does it usually mean when someone picks expensive chocolates that they know you like?”  
  
“That they’re trying to slip me a love potion.”  
  
Draco paused, and then sat down on a chair behind him and nodded. “When you’ve been Harry Potter all your life, I reckon it does.”  
  
Harry stepped forwards, and if Draco had hoped to attract his attention, at least he had it now, all to himself, with Harry’s eyes wide and focused as if he was hoping to trick Draco into confessing his secrets that way. “Tell me what it means when  _you_  do it.”  
  
Draco licked his paper-dry lips and stood up. Fuck if he was doing this from a seated position. “It means,” he said, carefully, “that I really want you to stay in the wizarding world, and I thought you might if you liked me enough.”  
  
Harry looked at him as though he wished he had let the wizard he’d stopped in Diagon Alley curse Draco. “ _Why_?”  
  
“I don’t know why,” Draco said. “Except that I think it’s stupid and unfair that you’re letting other people drive you away, and you’ve already paid a greater toll to stay here and have the run of the wizarding world than any of the people who were ready to sacrifice you to Gringotts did. And it’s like letting them win if you go. And I want you to do something other than bodyguard for us and pretend to be our slave.”  
  
“That was the deal,” Harry said, turning away to walk towards a series of targets on the other side of the room. “Until the end of the year. And tutoring you, of course.”  
  
“I don’t want you to do that if you don’t like it,” Draco said.  
  
Harry paused between one step and another. Then he brought his foot down and stood there with his arms folded, facing the targets, counting them. Or he looked like he was counting them. If he was, Draco didn’t think he needed to spend  _that_ much time making sure how many there were.   
  
“Why would what I want matter to you?”  
  
Draco stared at his back. “Most people don’t require an explanation of that,” he said, because it was the most neutral way of saying what he wanted to say.  
  
“Most people aren’t slaves, either,” Harry said.  
  
“You can’t attribute this to just being Harry Potter, the way you could the chocolates and the love potions,” Draco said. “You  _haven’t_ had people trying to enslave you all your life. I know you haven’t.”  
  
He didn’t expect Harry’s laughter, or the way his shoulders twitched as though he was trying to keep himself from vomiting. After a few minutes, though, Harry stopped laughing and straightened up with a deep breath.   
  
“True, to a point,” he said, still without facing Draco. That was starting to get on Draco’s nerves. “But living as the Chosen One was more than a bit like being a slave. I didn’t realize that until it was over, or I would have rebelled earlier. But it was all about what I had to do, my _duty_ , and not what I wanted. That was going to be for after the war.  
  
“Then I found out that it wasn’t, that the debts I owed weren’t done. So I told myself I would pay this final debt, and that would be it.” He turned around, shaking his head. “You want me to stay here, where people think I owe them and they own me? Fuck you.”  
  
Draco’s breath caught, and he took a step forwards, staring. “Fuck yes,” he said, without meaning to.  
  
Harry turned his wand so that it pointed at Draco’s belly, and having seen all the spells Harry knew that Draco had never even  _heard_ of, Draco knew to take the threat seriously. “And now you’re making fun of me.”  
  
Draco shook his head and let his tongue have free rein. That was never a good idea with his parents, but if Draco was right, both he and Harry could get lots of things from each other that they would never get from anyone else in their lives. “No. No, I didn’t mean to. I just mean that I like seeing you angry and paying attention to your future instead of curling up and acting like you’re ready to die.”  
  
“I never did that.” Harry obviously measured the floor space between them with his eyes.  
  
“Oh, right, not literally,” Draco said. “But you gave in and you went along, and that’s not  _you_. If we hadn’t rescued you, you would have let the goblins have you and treat you as their slave, wouldn’t you?”  
  
Harry’s wand shook as he clenched his fists. “What else could I have done, given what they were threatening?” he asked, not quite snapping.  
  
“You could have fought back and got away,” Draco said. “That’s all. That’s what a lot of people would have done. I’m not saying that you’re wrong for agreeing to be a slave—”  
  
“Yes, you are.”  
  
Draco had to smile. “All right. But you didn’t protest as much. You shut down, and I know you have dangerous magic, but you didn’t argue. You went along with it for the sake of others, because that’s what you always do. If you’re feeling different now, I’m glad. Because I don’t want to be one of the people you simply go along with.”  
  
“Or someone I martyr myself for?”  
  
Draco nodded. “Precisely. I want you to duel me because you like having someone to train, or because you like seeing me writhing in pain.” He saw Harry flinch, and hurried on. Maybe that had been a bad thing to mention. Harry wasn’t a sadist, except towards himself. “I want you to have fun thinking of all the ways to fool the goblins.”  
  
“There’s not much I can do, when I have to wear chains whenever they come to visit you.”  
  
“But you can be more creative with it,” Draco said. “You can come up with tricks and lies that we would never think of, because it’s not us having to wear the chains. You could work with us more than you have.”  
  
Harry just looked at him. Then he said, “I hate the goblins. I want to kill them when I see them, not think of how to fool them.”  
  
“Then daydream about killing them when they’re in front of you, and plan the rest of the time.” Draco was starting to wonder how Harry had survived some of his adventures at school, with emotions that strong. Maybe Granger had told him to shut up and let her plan. “Come on, Harry. I know you can do better than this.”  
  
“I shouldn’t  _have_ to.”  
  
“No,” Draco agreed. “And at the end of the year, if you still want to leave the wizarding world, I can’t stop you. But it seems you think the year until then has to be one of suffering and misery, and it  _doesn’t_. I promise. I can help you. Tell me what you’d like and I’ll try to make sure it happens. And you can make the deception easier on yourself.”  
  
“It’s—it has to be a bargain, Malfoy.” Harry spoke as haltingly as though trying to read the language off a complex legal document in front of him. “The way I made with your father, about Ginny and the weregild. I’m not going to trust any of you without a bargain.”  
  
Draco stood up straighter. “If you want to make a bargain, then lay the terms down,” he said. “I’ll accept them, unless you require me to betray my family.”  
  
Harry stepped away from him, as though he had tried to brace himself against a wall that suddenly vanished. “Fine,” he said, through his teeth, not turning his head to look at Draco. “I want you to promise that you’ll help me the way you said you would.”  
  
“Fine,” Draco said. “What do I get in return?”  
  
Harry fidgeted back and forth until Draco wondered if he would get an answer today. Then he said, “I’ll think about staying in the wizarding world at the end of the year. Only  _think_ ,” he snapped, as if he had seen Draco’s mouth opening from the corner of his eye. “I didn’t say that I would stay here.”  
  
“Just thinking about it is enough for me,” Draco said.  _There are so many things here that he loves, and so many people he loves. I can’t believe that he’ll abandon them without looking back._    
  
 _Maybe I can even become one of those people he loves._  
  
It was a more daring plan than any Draco had envisioned before, one that left him breathless and panting, and he nearly missed Harry’s words. “Really? Even though you can’t read my mind and know that?” He turned to Draco and raised his eyebrows at him.  
  
Draco nodded. This was something important, he knew. He couldn’t fuck it up. He held Harry’s eyes and kept his voice level and low. “I trust you. You’ve kept your word to my family so far, in a situation where lots of people would just run away. You accepted the bargain you talked about with my father, even though I could see the reasons it would repulse you. And you saved the world. I trust you.”  
  
Harry bit his lip and whirled away, arms folded around himself. Lots of people wouldn’t have recognized the gesture. Draco, who had held himself like that and rocked in a corner of the Manor’s rooms when the Dark Lord was at his worst, did.  
  
“All right,” Harry whispered at last. “That’s our bargain, then. You try to help me fool the goblins and get better at it, and I’ll think about staying in the wizarding world.”  
  
“You do that,” Draco said. He made his voice simple, he hoped, without the cutting edge of mockery that Harry would be looking for. “In the meantime, I have one idea about the goblins already.”  
  
Harry tilted his head at him, eyes sparking. “Yeah? What is it?”  
  
And Draco told him slowly, for the sheer pleasure of watching Harry’s eyes widen and his lips part. 


	9. Everything Changes

“Mr. Potter is looking  _well_.”  
  
Harry kept his gaze focused straight ahead as he came down the stairs in his ornamental chains. Just breathe slowly, Draco had told him. Easier said than done, Harry would have claimed, but Draco had sat with him yesterday, breathing in and out, focusing on going slowly until Harry began to see the trick of it, and breathe with him.  
  
He could begin the plan they had talked about when he reached the bottom of the staircase. He focused his eyes on the steps before him, felt his feet brushing the planks of marble, felt the smooth wood of the bannister beneath his hands, and felt the breath brushing in and out of his lungs.  
  
“ _Very_ well,” said the goblin who had spoken before, and chuckled. Harry recognized the sound of that chuckle. It was Ripclaw, who had come often to Harry during the time he was staying in Gringotts while they negotiated his slavery and gloated over him. “I’m surprised to see him looking so natural.”  
  
“Oh, of course we wish our slaves to look natural in their chains,” said Lucius’s careless voice. “If they tripped over them and made nuisances of themselves, we would not wish to have them around. And that would be—unfortunate.”  
  
“Of course, of course,” Ripclaw said, while Harry counted the steps left in front of him and found they had narrowed down to one. “But you would be surprised how many people neglect the basic necessities, the—”  
  
There was one step left, and then there were none, and Harry hit the bottom and turned towards Draco, kneeling in his direction and looking up at him adoringly. His skin still prickled when he did it, but he told himself what would come in the future, and managed to hold the position.  
  
Draco looked down on him with a cool expression that Harry would have thought was real if he hadn’t seen the way Draco flinched in their practice sessions. Then he reached out and placed a steady hand on Harry’s forehead.  
  
“Draco, what is this?” Narcissa sounded remote, interested, and no more. Harry still felt Draco shudder a little.  
  
He wished he could mouth,  _You didn’t_ tell  _them?_ But there was too much chance the goblins would see, so he kept his eyes focused on Draco and his face absolutely blank. Draco’s hand stroked his hair again, as though to calm both Harry and himself.  
  
“I tried a small charm on Potter,” Draco said, so careless that Harry was afraid someone would suspect something. But he probably wouldn’t have before he got to know Draco as well as he did, so the goblins might not, either. “He was being disobedient and obnoxious, and I wanted nothing more than an hour of peace. But it affected him in a much deeper way.” His fingers curled in Harry’s hair, and he laughed. “Who knew that there was something inside him that  _longed_ to submit?”  
  
The words still made Harry want to spit. But he held his tongue, and replayed, over and over, in his head, Draco’s sick expression. If he didn’t want to submit, still less did Draco want to take his submission.  
  
“What an intriguing idea,” Ripclaw said, and he came nearer. Harry saw his thick toenails out of the corner of his eye. “Mr. Malfoy, could you—”  
  
Draco’s hand curled in Harry’s hair, and Harry recognized the signal they’d agreed on. He turned, drawing his wand smoothly, and held it at Ripclaw’s throat. Ripclaw stopped in place with a small squeak, staring at him. With Harry kneeling, their faces were almost on a level.  
  
Harry held his breathing still smooth and quiet, because if he panted with the hatred he really felt, they might suspect something was off. But yes, this was so much  _better_ than just lashing out with his magic and melting his bones. It was just the way Draco had promised it would be.   
  
 _Satisfying._  
  
That made him wonder if Draco knew what he was talking about on other topics, too. Such as the wisdom of staying in the wizarding world after his year was over.  
  
“Stop him, stop him!” Ripclaw’s hands were scrabbling at his throat, and his eyes were so wide that Harry thought they might tear through the sides of the sockets. “If he—if he hurts me—he can’t hurt me! It’s not  _allowed_!”  
  
“You did something that I didn’t want you to,” Draco said, voice sharp as a splinter of bone. “Came near me, and asked to touch  _my_ slave. Harry’s now attuned to me so closely that he sensed that, and he can strike back to protect me.” He paused minutely. “Or did you not hear about the way that he defended me in Diagon Alley the other day?”  
  
“I heard.” Ripclaw backed cautiously away from Harry, watching his wand. Harry wanted to laugh, to cheer, and the hatred within him was changing now, veering away from the bile-like burn to a gentler flame. “I thought—I just thought he wasn’t allowed to do it to goblins, that’s all.”  
  
Draco shrugged with one shoulder. “I’ve made a more thorough slave of him than you ever could. Perhaps because I used caresses instead of threats.” His fingers tightened on Harry’s scalp again. “And he’s allowed to threaten anyone I want, given the price we paid for him.”  
  
“Certainly.” Ripclaw seemed to have recovered from his shock. He bowed to Draco and turned to Lucius. “Mr. Potter seems submissive enough to content us. Perhaps we can cut the visit shorter this time? Since the evidence is so much more prominent.”  
  
Harry leaned back on his heels when Draco signed to him that he should, sucking in a deep breath of air. It was over, and he had survived, and yes, this was  _much_ more fun than his first imposture had been.  
  
Not as much fun as being free would be, he had to admit. Not as much fun as being free of the need for imposture at all.  
  
But he had survived and enjoyed himself, and at the moment, he was inclined to think that was much more important than the continuing fact of his slavery.   
  
Draco stroked his hair, a silent reminder that the goblins were still here and Harry might do something to give himself away. With the way Harry felt at the moment, that would be deadly. It would crush all his enjoyment and make him more a slave than ever, because Draco would never dare try this again.  
  
Harry huddled nearer and put his face against Draco’s knees. They hadn’t discussed that, and for a second, Draco went so stiff that Harry was afraid he would shove him away. But then Draco chuckled and reached down to frame the sides of Harry’s face with his hands.  
  
“You just want to be nearer and nearer, little one, don’t you?” he whispered. “Well, I think I can gratify you in another way.”  
  
He urged Harry gently backwards and bent down. Harry saw the warning—and asking—shine in his eyes, and nodded. He heard Ripclaw chuckle. Of course the bastard would think that Harry was begging for what would happen next.  
  
When Draco kissed him, though, it was full of the delight that they both felt in tricking Ripclaw. And Harry would much rather kiss Draco’s mouth than Lucius’s shoes. He kissed back with interest, even slipping his tongue in when Draco’s lips parted a little.  
  
Draco went even stiffer at that, but wizarding robes were deep, and Harry didn’t think goblins were as adept at reading wizard body language as he had first thought they were. He stepped back a moment later and nodded, facing Ripclaw with a neutral face that Harry had to admit was impressive.  
  
“So,” he said. “I have a willing slave, something you never managed. Do you have anything else to say?”  
  
Ripclaw shook his head. He had his hands together, and was looking at Harry from under half-lidded eyes. Harry blinked, wondering what kinds of weird fantasies about wizards goblins might have.  
  
But Ripclaw said then, “It doesn’t matter as much to me that we couldn’t get him to submit, watching this. You were right, Mr. Malfoy. You made him your own with caresses and not threats.” He sighed. “Watching him  _crawl_...”  
  
It was said in much the same tone as Voldemort might have spoken it. Harry felt his muscles coil and his magic rise as things that were almost separate from him, because there was no way he could refuse to respond to this.  
  
Draco touched his head, and Harry turned towards him in what felt like a dream, scraps of color and thought blowing past him, words making no more sense.  
  
Draco kissed him again, and this time, it was hard enough that Harry found  _Draco’s_ tongue in  _his_ mouth before he thought of it. He reached up with both hands and laid them on either side of Draco’s face the way Draco had done with him earlier.  
  
The magic buzzed beneath his fingers, the magic that could turn skin and muscle into grey sludge, and Harry thought it would come out. He knew that if it touched Draco, it would melt him as effectively as the goblin Harry had reason to be angry at.  
  
It wouldn’t matter. He wouldn’t be able to apologize later, he wouldn’t be able to bring Draco back. His body shook with the effort of restraining itself, and of responding at the same time to the harsh, insistent tongue that thrust at him.  
  
But if he could hold back, then he would have the chance later to speak about this with Draco, and especially to ask what the fuck he had been thinking.  
  
That thought, of opportunities that he could only have in the future if he controlled himself now, made Harry gasp and break free of the kiss to bow his head. Draco stroked his hair, in silence and what felt like sympathy, although Harry had no idea how Draco could know what he was feeling right now.  
  
Draco turned to face Ripclaw, although Harry only knew that from the way he watched his boots shuffle across the floor. “He’s calm now,” Draco said. “But I would leave him alone, if I were you.” He made his voice more threatening than Harry had probably looked when he was about to explode.  
  
Ripclaw muttered something, and then they were going towards the door, they were going out of the Manor, they were  _leaving._  Harry repeated the words to himself until he relaxed, and no longer resented the floor under his knees.  
  
“You did very well.”  
  
That was Lucius, and it almost brought Harry’s magic screaming to the surface again. He looked up—  
  
But his view was blocked. Draco had stepped in between his father and Harry, and although Harry didn’t know what expression he had on his face, it was enough to make Lucius’s fingers clench around his cane and his face close.  
  
“I don’t want you to say anything that could be taken as praise for a slave right now,” Draco said, “no matter how sincerely you feel it. All right?”  
  
Lucius stood there, and then nodded and swept away. That still didn’t leave them alone, though, since Narcissa had come back from escorting the goblins to the door and was looking at them with a faint smile.  
  
Harry became aware that he was kneeling in front of her, and scrambled to his feet, face so hot that he was surprised he didn’t burst into flames. Narcissa held out her hand, and Harry looked around for a moment, wondering if she wanted his wand. He didn’t know if he could give that up right now.  
  
But she moved forwards, and Harry realized she wanted to shake his hand. He swallowed and clasped hers. Once again, she failed to turn into dust and ash.  
  
“Thank you, Harry,” she said. “I know that cannot have been easy for you.”  
  
And she turned and walked away with a step so calm that she might have been attending a polite little tea-party, or whatever pure-blood women did. Harry realized he had no idea, unless he could count on his experience of Molly and Ginny, and he really doubted that Narcissa spent mornings in the kitchen baking and casting household charms.  
  
“Are you all right?” Draco’s voice was so soft that Harry could have ignored it and walked upstairs if he wanted to. He almost did.  
  
But Draco was responsible, at least partially, for the fact that both of them, all of them including Ripclaw, had escaped from the consequences of Harry’s temper. He turned around, and found that Draco’s face was red, too.  
  
That made Harry relax his shoulders and roll them a little. “I’m all right,” he said, shaking his head when Draco peered at him. “I mean it. I would have gone after him at one point, but you spared all of us from that. Thank you,” he added.  
  
“Are you angry about the way I did it?”  
  
 _The kiss._ Because he’d done it back, it took Harry a long moment to remember that it had been Draco’s idea in the first place. He blinked his eyes and touched the nape of his neck. “I don’t know,” he said.  
  
“That’s more encouraging than saying you’ll destroy me for the presumption, at least,” Draco said, and smiled.  
  
Harry smiled back, and, because it had been that kind of day, said, “Let’s go get something to eat, and then I think we have some things to talk about.”  
  
*  
  
Draco couldn’t help crunching the biscuits that the house-elves brought them a little harder than usual, and licking his fingers free of crumbs—something he would never have done if he and Harry were eating with his parents. There were such things as  _manners_ , and, worse, there were such things as his mother’s frowns.  
  
But here, he could catch Harry’s attention, and he would blush and look away in the most  _delicious_ way. So Draco considered that he was doing something all right, and even laudable in its way. He was furthering Harry’s desire to stay in the wizarding world if he could give him someone to trust, someone he was attracted to.  
  
 _And someone I’m attracted to._ It didn’t cost him as much embarrassment to admit it, now.  
  
Finally, Draco leaned back in his chair and folded his arms over his bulging stomach, smiling at Harry, a little sleepily. Harry blinked as though stunned, and then smiled back. Draco nodded. They had taken the first step, and Harry wasn’t running away.  
  
“I suppose you want to know why I kissed you,” Draco said.  
  
“To calm me down and keep me from killing Ripclaw, I thought.” Harry hadn’t licked his fingers, even after he saw Draco do it, as though he assumed things a Malfoy could do were forbidden to a Malfoy slave. He just dried his fingers off on a napkin and gave Draco an even look. “And to put on a little show, so he wouldn’t think too hard about whether I was really submitting or not.”  
  
Draco blinked. He hadn’t thought Harry would lay it out so coolly like that. “Well, of course,” he said. “But also because I want you to stay.”  
  
“Kissing me like you wanted to suck my soul out through my tongue is supposed to make me think about  _that_?” Harry asked blankly.  
  
Draco shivered a little at the description, and hoped Harry hadn’t noticed. “Not  _think_  about that. Just feel it. Don’t you want to stay in the wizarding world with someone who would take that sort of risk for you, someone who would touch you like that  _all the time_ if you wanted?” He made his voice as soft as he could, and saw Harry’s eyes widen a little.  
  
“Nothing makes sense,” Harry said, after a few seconds of what looked like deep consideration. “You’ve fallen in love with your slave?”  
  
Draco had to smile. “No one said anything about love. I just kissed you for the first time, and you kissed me. People do that all the time without being in love. And you’re not my slave, either. We both know that.”  
  
“You acted like I was.”  
  
“So did you,” Draco snapped, before he thought about it. Well, he had the  _right_ to say that. He wasn’t going to act as though he was the only one responsible for this deception. Harry had agreed, and he was the one who had helped Draco create a private world where they were teacher and student, or equals, not master and slave. “We only did it because we had to,” he went on, when he’d calmed himself down. “I know better than to think I could ever really take you over that way, Harry.”  
  
“If you don’t want to take me over, or just to make sure that your family didn’t give up a vault for nothing, what  _do_ you want?”  
  
“What I’ve already told you I want,” Draco said, but thinking back on it, he had to concede that it was possible he hadn’t come out and told Harry exactly what he wanted. “For you to stay, and—I don’t know how to say it so you won’t laugh. Be with me? That’s the best I can do right now.”  
  
“Because seeing me leave the wizarding world would mean you’d been less than a kind master?” Harry shoved his chair back from the table. “You don’t need to think I would say something like that, Draco. I don’t intend to ever tell anyone but my friends what goes on in the Manor.”  
  
“That  _isn’t_ it,” Draco said. “Merlin, Potter. I’ve kissed you, and I’ve suggested ways that you could avoid the goblins from destroying your spirit, and I’ve fought beside you. And you suggest that I just want to keep my good name?”  
  
“Your family’s good name.” Harry was staring at him, squinting at him really. “I think that matters more to you.”  
  
“You’re wrong,” Draco said, and then had to backtrack, because Harry’s squint got more skeptical than ever, and he would probably start breaking something in a minute. “I mean, not about my family’s good name being important to me. But it’s also important for me that you stay here, and that—I get to know you. I can’t get to know you if you go to the Muggle world.”  
  
Harry closed his eyes. “I felt my magic boiling up like it would destroy Ripclaw today. You have to wonder if I’m dangerous, after that.”  
  
“I stopped it by kissing you. That doesn’t make your magic sound very dangerous to  _me_.”  
  
Harry choked on his laughter, and sat back, shaking his head and smiling at Draco with an expression that looked a lot better than that pale deaths-head of a mask Harry had been wearing so far. “I never tried that when I was looking for ways to calm my magic down. Being kissed by the son of an enemy, a former rival from school.”  
  
“I’m not that now,” Draco said. “I’m someone who’s trained with you.”  
  
“You could find someone else to train you,” Harry said, his eyes filled with a challenge that Draco understood. “Someone who makes a better dueling instructor than I do. I’m not an expert. I know spells you’ve never seen before, but I’ll run out of those soon.”  
  
“Imagine,” Draco said, not knowing the words that would come tumbling out of his mouth, or how ridiculous they might make him sound, until he began to speak, “imagine living with me for a year. The spells we’ll cast, the duels we’ll hold, and all the ways we’ll fool the goblins. Because I  _know_ you, Harry. You won’t be content with just the one kind of lie. You’ll want to try them all out sooner or later.”  
  
Harry blinked at him, but said nothing. He was listening, and for right now, that was enough.  
  
Draco stood up and spread his hands, trying to indicate the room they were in, and more than that,  _always_ more than that, the Manor and his parents’ money and the way of life he’d grown up with, which Harry wouldn’t have any idea about. “This isn’t life the way you know it, but it could be, for a little while. You could have the advantages and see if you liked it. And if you did, I would make it more than tolerable to you. I’d make it pleasant. Because otherwise you won’t stay, and I want you to.”  
  
“Still relating everything to your own desires, Malfoy?” Harry glared at him like a glittering statute. No one could beat him down, not Harry, and Draco found himself smiling agreeably at the revelation.  
  
“Of course not,” he said. “Unless I can persuade you, then I know my desires won’t become reality.”  
  
“But they’re still the reason you’re doing this.”  
  
Draco laughed. “It’s not like you would trust me if I said they weren’t. You know that I’m selfish, and that hasn’t altered.” He paused, then added softly, “We did this for life-debts, and yes, I think my father  _is_ thinking that we’ll gain some prestige when you’re free, to be known as the family who sheltered the Boy-Who-Lived. But I’m doing this now because I’m learning to like you, and I want you to like me back.”  
  
Harry’s face had gone mask-like. “What if I said the only way I would like you is if you left me alone?”  
  
Draco hesitated. But he reminded himself that Harry was still a slave, after everything, and that he shouldn’t press too hard. Because that  _would_ be the way to lose him forever.  
  
So Draco nodded and said, “I can do that. Do you want to be by yourself right now?” It was the only peace offering he could think of, even though he wanted to stay here and discuss the kiss some more, and what they were going to do the next time the goblins came.  
  
Harry looked at the chairs and the floors and the table, as though they could offer the answer for him. But in the end, he faced Draco, and took a slow, deep breath, and nodded. “I want to. I need to think.”  
  
Just because he said that didn’t mean he would end up deciding against Draco, Draco reminded himself sharply. He bowed his head and said politely, “All right. If you need me, I’ll be in my bedroom.” He added, as Harry’s mouth opened, of course to say that he didn’t know where it was, “Any of the house-elves will be happy to show you the way.”  
  
He walked to the door of the dining room, and turned around. “I know it’s not much, but you  _do_ have the freedom of the Manor,” he said. “If you want to go somewhere else.” He turned around once again, away from the piercing light in Harry’s eyes, and left. 


	10. Reflections on Magic

Of course, now that he had the time alone that he’d asked Draco for, Harry had no idea what he should do with it.  
  
He stood looking out the window of the dining room, which was enchanted but still showed a pretty view of green gardens and white blossoming apple trees, for a while. Then he turned and walked into the corridors.  
  
The Manor was bigger than he’d ever thought, with more wings and more rooms. Harry kept opening doors and looking at enchanted windows, and then shutting the doors up again. He was looking for something, but he had the feeling he wouldn’t know what it was until he found it.  
  
Then he opened one door that made him blink and shade his eyes, and wondered if he had found a way out into the gardens.  
  
No, he saw at a single glance. The room was huge, but still a single room. The light came from an enchanted window on the far side, with the sunlight dancing on shelves and shelves of books. And in the center of the room was a podium with a single book open there. Harry wandered up to it.  
  
The words on the page moved as he looked at them, and he grimaced. Too much of that would give him a headache. If it was a Malfoy book, it probably had an enchantment to prevent it from being read by Muggleborns, anyway.  
  
He’d barely turned towards the door, though, when the words settled. Curious despite himself, Harry turned back around.  
  
And he’d found  _ _it._  
  
_ The words on the page sparkled as he read them. It was an ordinary story, a story about a boy who grew up in a cold, wet hut on the edge of a village and dreamed of hunting dragons even though he didn’t have a wand or a sword or anything else, and who had parents who treated him unkindly, so he also dreamed about running away. Harry swallowed as he read the descriptions. Maybe the book was touching his mind, interfering with his thoughts, drawing on his memories.  
  
But he read on, because he had to. And the boy did run away from home, and ran into a group of people on the road who felt sorry for him and gave him food and water and new clothing. But when the boy woke up in the middle of their camp, he was clapped in chains, and they told him he was their slave now, and he had to march with them and work for them during the night, cooking their food and setting up the camp.  
  
Harry leaned nearer, reading more and more rapidly. The boy slaved away, and Harry wanted to find the point where he broke free and made his captors pay for what they’d done, or at least ran to a new home with people who really would love him.  
  
It didn’t come. Page after page of grueling slavery description, and Harry felt his magic snarling and tightening in him, the way it always did, the way it always would. He was a fool to think that he would find any redemption here, or that he would be able to find any in the wizarding world.  
  
The rage nearly exploded when he got to a scene where the people who had captured the boy refused to feed him. Harry pulled his hand sharply back from the book. His magic could damage the organic leather binding and the paper that had once been a tree—  
  
Then he realized that his magic was quiet, calm, beneath the surface of his skin.  
  
Harry shook his head. Then he shook it again. He could feel the anger blazing away in his forehead and his cheeks and his heartbeat and his ears. It just seemed disconnected from his magic, the way it had once been before he began to feel his rage turning into and influencing his power.  
  
What about the book had made it do that? Was there an enchantment of some kind on the book?  
  
Harry picked up the book and turned it around, more confident now that he knew he wouldn’t turn it to sludge right away. But he couldn’t see any sign of enchantments he didn’t know on the cover or the binding, and he was usually pretty good about seeing things like that, after the amount of training he had received.  
  
Harry frowned and lowered the book to the podium again, shaking his head. On the other hand, what were the chances that he would just happen to stumble into this room and find the book laid out and open to a story about a slave? Maybe one of the Malfoys had arranged this.  
  
For a few minutes more, he concentrated on the book the way he had been taught, to make sure that he could correctly recall all the details in a written explanation as well as in a Pensieve memory. Then he turned away.  
  
His alone time was over after all. He wanted to find Draco and see what he had to say about the book.  
  
But he ran into Lucius first.  
  
*  
  
“I wish that you would speak to Draco about the pace of his courting young Mr. Potter, Lucius.”  
  
That was all Narcissa had had to say. Well, the press of her hand on his arm had helped as well, Lucius had to admit. But he would have spoken to Draco regardless. That demonstration in front of the goblins had been planned, and accomplished what it was supposed to. But Lucius doubted that the rage and the passion on display had been false.  
  
He was walking through one of the corridors that led out towards the gardens when a door to a library Lucius hadn’t visited in years opened, and Potter stumbled through. Lucius stayed his steps. Draco was the one he still needed to speak to, but Potter was an acceptable substitute.  
  
He didn’t get the chance to speak his carefully-prepared words. Instead, Potter looked directly at him and asked, “Was it you or Draco who put that book there?”  
  
“What book?” Lucius considered his tone polite and well-bred. He certainly did not deserve the contemptuous gaze that Potter threw at him a minute later.  
  
“The book I found in that library,” Potter said, and jerked his head at the door he’d stumbled out of. “It was open on a podium, and it was telling me the story of a boy who was treated badly and ran away and then was enslaved, and I got angry, but my magic  _didn’t_ melt the book.” He took a deep breath at the end of that long sentence; Lucius might have felt compelled to check him if he went on. “And then I realized that my magic was calmed down.  _Why_?”  
  
“It was not because of any magic on the part of the book, if that is what you are thinking,” said Lucius, recognizing part of where his distress had come from.   
  
“Then what was it because of?” Potter turned blind, seeking eyes on him. “What else would make a book show me that story?”  
  
“It was magic,” Lucius conceded, “but it was of the house, and not the book. The house must have let you into that library, or perhaps even subtly guided you there.” He paused. Potter showed no sign of wanting to talk about how he had found the library, so Lucius had to go on. “It can produce books that will soothe someone’s mind or answer a need when someone who belongs in the house needs it badly enough.”  
  
Potter recoiled with a hiss. “I don’t belong in this house!”  
  
“The definitions of old magic like the Manor’s are not the definitions of human beings,” said Lucius with a vague soothing air that he thought should really have belonged to Draco. Well, Draco was not here right now, and Lucius had no wish to be harmed in the way that the boy’s magic could harm him. “The house felt that you did, so it guided you to one solution to your problem.”  
  
Potter clenched his hands. “Does that mean my magic won’t come back when I need it?”  
  
“I doubt it,” said Lucius. “The magic of the library is limited, as is the magic of all books. It can provide only a temporary solution.” He hesitated, then went on, because Potter was still looking distressed, and he did not wish to fear for the future of his portraits or his son, either. “My father found a suggestion for a gift that he needed to impress a potential ally in that library. It was still up to him to find or make or buy the gift. The books could not force him to do anything.”  
  
Potter stared at him. “Why are you reassuring me?”  
  
“Because of my son, and my wife,” said Lucius. “They’ve taken a shine to you, although I don’t understand why. I want peace in my house, and I want my son to have what he wants.”  
  
“Which is me not to leave the wizarding world.” Potter shook his head. “Even though I have no idea why.”  
  
Lucius thought about correcting Potter on what Draco wanted, and then decided that that was Draco’s to do. Perhaps even Lucius was wrong about what was going through his son’s head at the moment. “Consider that, if you stayed in the wizarding world, you might be able to find a permanent solution to calming your magic down.”  
  
“Or I might hurt people, because I’ll be around all the people who were irritating me in the first place.”  
  
“Or you might find a solution,” Lucius repeated. The boy seemed thick to him, though perhaps that was only a result of having most of his friends and “allies” stand back and refuse to respond when he was being enslaved. Perhaps the lingering confusion in his head had clouded his mind. “I do not think you will in the Muggle world, unless you find another wizard who will know your identity in any case, and might irritate you further with hatred or worship.”  
  
Potter bit his lip. He looked young now, much younger than the skilled negotiator who had confronted Lucius in his study over the weregild that he wanted Lucius to pay for the youngest Weasley. “That’s a perspective I never considered before.”  
  
 _Of course not, because I am wiser than both you and the fools that you usually deal with._  
  
But Lucius was also wise enough to know that saying that would not exactly encourage the boy. He only nodded and examined his sleeve for a moment. “I think Draco would like to speak with you, when you make your decision about whether to stay here or not.”  
  
“Well, I don’t have a  _choice_ right now.”  
  
And Potter gave him a look of loathing and walked off. Lucius sighed. He had done what he could. Narcissa should be pleased, and Draco, once Lucius had found him and discharged the errand from his mother.   
  
The rest was up to Potter, and would have to be left up to him. Lucius was not sure that Draco understood that part yet.  
  
*  
  
“May I ask what you intended when you kissed Potter?”  
  
Draco sighed and leaned further back on the stone bench that one of his ancestors had put outside near the largest rosebushes in the gardens. The white roses spread ripples of new, honey-like scent on the air whenever the breeze stirred them. They had helped to calm Draco down, but the tension had crinkled his spine up again the minute he heard his father’s voice.  
  
“To fool the goblins and make them think he was really submissive,” he mumbled, watching his hands. “I told you that.”  
  
“You did not tell me the exact method.” His father’s voice was dry as he paused at the end of the bench and twirled his cane. Draco caught the flashes of the sun off the metal of the cane, but he kept his eyes on his hands, in his lap. “Was there a reason for that?”  
  
“I thought you and Mother might object,” Draco admitted, finally looking up.  
  
“Why, when we did not object to the fact that you are practically courting him?” Lucius leaned on his cane and studied the white roses. “The house-elves need to trim these back. Just because they are beautiful is not reason enough to allow them to take over from the red roses.”  
  
“You didn’t object then—” Draco began, and then stopped, because he wasn’t even sure whether he was going to ask a question or start an incredulous statement. He sighed and let his head collapse into his hands. “It was so simple when it was just life-debts.”  
  
His father didn’t answer for long moments, long enough for Draco to hope that Lucius would just walk away and leave it. But that wasn’t his way, and sure enough, a second later he started talking again.  
  
“We have given you little enough true happiness, Draco. Because of my choices, you and your mother had to suffer torments during the war that I would not wish on Potter.”  
  
Draco winced and lifted his head. “It wasn’t just your choices.” His left arm burned with memory.  
  
“Perhaps not,” said his father, with a pause delicate enough that Draco nearly got up and walked away. The shards of that memory pierced him so much. “But I was part of it, and since the war—I have learned—there are things more important than the traditions and continuity I once thought were greatest. If you were happy inside those traditions, well enough. But you are not going to be happy inside them.”  
  
Draco blinked and looked up at him. “How do you know that?” It wasn’t like his parents had talked to him about his current beliefs or when he was going to get married in the year since the war. They were busy with too many other things, including just settling back into the Manor and dealing with their own memories of it.  
  
“Because of the way that you look at Potter.” Lucius reached out and tapped his cane against one of the tendrils of white roses that he said were overgrown, although honestly Draco didn’t see how he could tell. They were just beautiful and there, and that was all that mattered to Draco. “I know that you’ll follow him with your heart. You might never go with him if he persists in making his home in the Muggle world, but you won’t stay completely here, either.” He wrung his hand over the cane-head in a way that told Draco how difficult the next words were for him to speak. “I do not want you to enter into marriage or adult life with a divided heart.”  
  
Draco flushed hot enough that he nearly thought about ordering a house-elf to come outside and fling water on his face. “Just because I kissed him and don’t want him to leave doesn’t mean…I’m not in love with him, Father.”  
  
“But you are not in love with anyone else, either,” Lucius told his reflection in the surface of the cane. “And that sets out, helps to limit and guarantee, your reactions to him. At the moment, you feel passionately that you’re interested in him.” He eyed Draco sideways. “And you wouldn’t be happy if he left, even at the end of a year.”  
  
Draco studied his tightly-clasped hands. No, he wouldn’t. He felt that.  
  
But he brought up, hardly knowing why, the arguments he had expected his parents to use against  _him_. “This is—it’s an unusual situation, though, Father. Of course it is. Maybe I just feel so intensely about Harry because we’re all in the same house together, and he’s been training me to duel. Maybe I would feel that way about anyone I’d wanted to befriend who finally started paying attention to me.”  
  
Lucius made a smothered sound. Draco stared at him. Had that been laughter?  
  
“And who else is there, whom you wished to befriend and who rejected you?” Lucius asked, facing him fully. “You were very proud of telling me how everyone you wished to capture either came to your hand, or was a Gryffindor whom you hated anyway. Except for one person. One Gryffindor.”  
  
Draco hesitated. “But you would say that that’s just the frustrated desires of a child coming out, right? I mean, of course you would,” he finished, a little lamely, when Lucius only studied him as though Draco had started pulling roses off the bushes with his bare hands. “I can’t want to spend the rest of my life with someone we rescued because of life-debts and someone we had to pretend to enslave.”  
  
“Many things seem possible now that did not eighteen months ago,” said Lucius, and turned away.  
  
 _So now, of course, after he brought all that up, he’s going to leave me here to figure it out on my own?_  
  
But to have a sort of blessing on his possible friendship with Harry, to have his parents thinking so deeply about what made him happy, was more than Draco had ever  _hoped_ to have.  
  
He sat back, and thought for a long time.  
  
*  
  
“Forgive me for intruding, but you do not look happy.”  
  
Harry started and looked up. Narcissa had come on him in the small dining room where they usually ate meals, sometimes accompanied by Draco and Lucius now. He had been sitting at the table and turning dishes over in his hands without seeming to notice the clink of crystal and silver.  
  
“Is it time for lunch?” Harry stood up and scratched awkwardly at the back of his neck. “Sorry. I’ll move out of the way.”  
  
“It is remarkable to me,” said Narcissa, settling in the chair next to his instead of the one across the table from him, “that you see me and immediately assume that you are in the way, instead of simply early for lunch.”  
  
Harry looked at her and said nothing. Narcissa thought he was trying to feel her out, to see what she thought about the kisses that he and Draco had shared earlier.  
  
Narcissa, unlike Lucius, who found honesty difficult even now, when the war had destroyed so many of his preconceptions, decided she might as well tell him.  
  
“I suspect what convinced the goblins,” she said, “more than your chains and your charade, was the expression of happiness on Draco’s face when he kissed you.”  
  
Harry froze. “What?”  
  
Narcissa nodded. “He was not taking pleasure in your enslavement, I would think, but he  _was_ taking it from the way that you kissed him back, and the way that he got to kiss you in the first place.”  
  
Harry went on staring. When Narcissa said nothing more, he shook his head and demanded, “And you don’t care about that?”  
  
Narcissa raised her eyebrows. “Of course I care that my son is happy. I would say that I care when you are happy, too, but at the moment, I do not think that anything I can do will contribute more than momentarily to your pleasure.”  
  
Harry shook his head. “He wants me to stay here. I can’t do that.”  
  
“I can understand why you would wish to leave the Manor at the end of this year, yes, no matter how luxurious we can make it for you.”  
  
“No, I mean he wants me to stay in the wizarding world.”  
  
“He cannot force you,” said Narcissa. “He is not your owner in truth, you know, and neither are we. He can only ask you to reconsider.”  
  
Harry showed her his teeth. “And stay here with all the people who irritate me?”  
  
“If you  _did_ decide to remain in the Manor, the wards would keep most of them out.”  
  
Harry narrowed his eyes a little. “I can’t decide whether you’re making fun of me or not.”  
  
“Merely giving you a chance to think about other possibilities, the way that Draco is also doing,” said Narcissa, and had to smile at the baffled look on his face. She gestured, and the first plates and glasses appeared on the table, along with pitches of water that tilted themselves into the glasses. “ _Now_ it is time for lunch.”


	11. A Delicate Matter

“So I’d really like more of an answer as to why it’s so important to you that I stay in the wizarding world.”  
  
Draco stood in the middle of their training room and folded his arms. “I came here expecting training, not an interrogation.”  
  
“You’re going to get both.” Harry prowled towards him, his wand hanging lightly against his leg. Draco wondered if he should watch that or his eyes. Harry had emphasized the importance of both in his training so far, but Draco had to admit this was a fairly  _unusual_ kind of training that he hadn’t expected to receive. “But first, I want to know why it’s so important. This time a month ago, I doubt you gave me a thought.”  
  
“I thought it was unfair that the goblins were going to enslave you,” Draco decided to correct him. “I didn’t know that my parents were going to come up with this plan to rescue you, though.”  
  
Harry snorted a little. “Question dodged.” A second later, a Stinging Hex, as painful as though Harry had hit him with a flung stone, blossomed on his hip. Draco hopped and yelped.  
  
“Every time you don’t answer,” Harry explained, stalking around him in a circle, “you’ll have to pay that kind of penalty.”  
  
Draco huffed a sullen breath and answered. “I saw you kneeling before my father and the goblins that first time they visited, and it struck me how unfair it all was.”  
  
Harry paused and gave him an unexpectedly distant stare, as if Draco was a kind of light showing him a path he didn’t want to take. Draco looked back, as unflinching as he could. Part of what he wanted to do was show Harry that path. Harry couldn’t make him back down just by staring and looking weird, either.  
  
Maybe Harry came to the same conclusion, because he shook his head in what looked like irritation and returned to his stalking. “You’ve thought about that, have you? Well, I’ve had a lot longer than you have to think about how unfair it is. And I agree. It’s terrible. I hate the wizarding world for abandoning me. So I decided to abandon it. Why would you think that I should do the opposite when you’ve only been considering it for a few days?”  
  
“Maybe because I haven’t obsessed about it and I’m not blinded by hatred like you are,” Draco said, his temper finally waking up. Harry was being so bloody  _patronizing._ “And because I can see that the wizarding world owes you. The best response would be to stay and make them pay, not abandon them.”  
  
Once again Harry gave him that distant stare, but this time, Draco thought what he was seeing was the future. “I can’t change people’s minds. If anything could, Gringotts threatening to make me a slave would have. So the best thing I can do is preserve my own peace of mind and happiness.”  
  
“I agree,” said Draco. “Absolutely. But you can be a lot happier in a protected place in the wizarding world than you can be in the Muggle one.”  
  
“I still don’t want to stay here.”  
  
“Not in Diagon Alley, or Hogwarts, or Gringotts,” said Draco. “That’s fine. They don’t have the power to protect you. We do.”  
  
Harry hissed at him. “Have you considered what’s going to happen when the life-debts are fulfilled? When the year is up? There’s no way that your parents would let me stay here.”  
  
Draco snorted. “I think you’ve halfway persuaded my father into it already, just by being important to me. He wants me to be happy. And my mother accepts you. They wouldn’t kick you out if you wanted to make the Manor your home.”  
  
“Because of the prestige that my name adds to yours?”  
  
Draco rolled his eyes. “A second ago, you were convinced that the entire wizarding world hated you and nothing you could do would change that, and that my parents were among the people who hated you. Make up your  _mind_ , would you? Are we using you for our own gain or barely tolerating you?”  
  
“It could be both.”  
  
“Maybe,” said Draco. “But my parents take the life-debts seriously, and my father would never have given up a long-term advantage, like the vault, for only a temporary one. I’m afraid that you’ll have to resign yourself to being a wanted guest.”  
  
Harry glared. Draco would take that over the remote staring. At least it meant that Harry was fully engaged with both him and the world, this time.   
  
“Tell me why you decided that it was so unfair.”  
  
“Seeing you kneel is wrong,” Draco blurted. He hadn’t meant to be so blunt and straightforward, but Harry’s eyes were so  _astonished_ , and Draco thought he needed to hear this. “When you saved the world, and you were meant to be my  _equal._ My rival shouldn’t kneel like that. Neither should my dueling teacher.”  
  
“But your slave does.”  
  
Draco waved his hands. “And we’re trying to fool the goblins by doing this! That doesn’t mean that I think of you as a slave in truth!” And he never would, even if Harry was being so exasperating right now that Draco could kind of see why someone might  _want_ to enslave him. Maybe then he would listen.  
  
Harry considered him with wild eyes. “But I would have thought you would enjoy seeing your rival humbled.”  
  
Draco grimaced. He wondered if he could explain that strange moment of revelation he’d had when he saw Harry kneeling and bending towards his father’s boots, and decided he would have to try. Harry would never believe him without it. “I thought that, too. Then it happened. Maybe I would have known this earlier if—if I had ever seen you really humbled at Hogwarts.” It galled him to admit that Harry had always beaten him there, but Harry didn’t seem ready to gloat about it. “You were made for better things, that was all. But maybe I can beat you fairly. That would be one thing, to knock you on your arse in the dueling room and have it  _mean_ something.   
  
“And it would mean something if I was the one who made you want to abandon the wizarding world, too,” Draco added, inspired. “But I wasn’t. It was the goblins, and the public who decided to turn their backs on you, and I don’t want that to be true.  _I_ want to be the one to affect you. To make you fall down or decide to stay. That’s the truth of it.”  
  
Harry stared some more. Then he said, “I can believe  _that_ , at least. You wanted to be my friend, and when I didn’t want to—”  
  
“I still wanted to be important to you.” Draco cleared his throat a little, because now that he had spoken the truth, he had to worry about Harry believing him but still finding it childish. “I know it doesn’t sound—adult. Maybe I should have grown up and learned something after the war. Maybe I should leave you alone. But I can’t.”  
  
“And if I go into the Muggle world…”  
  
“Then I’ll never see you again.” Draco folded his arms and tried his best to quell any joke at his expense that Harry might come up with. “And that’s simply unacceptable.”  
  
Harry stood there for a long time, and then lowered his head to stare at his hands. Draco watched him. This might be more important than the ultimate decision Harry would make about whether to stay in or leave the wizarding world. This was the moment when Harry would make the decision about whether he could believe in or trust Draco.  
  
Draco knew that he wouldn’t give up if Harry decided against him. He would just continue annoying him and training with him and talking to him and trying to persuade him until Harry either changed his mind or offered Draco some insult that made it not worth persisting.  
  
But it would sure be a lot easier if Harry made the choice now, and it was the choice to let Draco come in and continue with his meddling.  
  
*  
  
 _What am I going to find in the Muggle world?_  
  
Harry knew the answer even as he asked himself. It wasn’t like he hadn’t endured his friends’ questions in the past few months, as the fact that he was going to be a goblin slave became reality and all the ways they tried to fight it collapsed in on themselves. They wanted to know why he would give the goblins the “satisfaction” of going to the Muggle world. They said it was giving up. They said that he should shove the fact of his enslavement in everyone’s faces and make them ashamed of themselves.  
  
Harry had replied that he would have peace in the Muggle world, plenty of people who didn’t recognize him and wouldn’t care to try, and that mattered more to him than vengeance.  
  
That was still true.  
  
Now, though, he began to wonder if Draco was right, and it wouldn’t be peace so much as desolation. No one to bother him there because no one knew what had happened in the war—but no one to sympathize with him, either. How was he supposed to explain some of his scars and his reflexes and his strangeness to Muggles? If he could find the right sort of person here, they would understand without the need for endless explanation.  
  
But it didn’t mean that the Malfoys were the right ones to help him with that kind of peace.  
  
“I could stay in the wizarding world and still never see you again,” he pointed out, to see what Draco would say.  
  
Draco sneered a little. “I would make sure that our paths crossed again.”  
  
“Because you want to see if you can best me in a duel?”  
  
“You’re being  _wilfully_ obtuse,” said Draco, and managed to make that cut in a way that his insults about Harry and his parents had never managed when they were kids. “Because I want to know that I matter to you, the way I just explained. When you ask a question and I answer it, try not to ignore the answer.”  
  
Harry firmed his mouth and looked off to the side. He was thinking of something else now, the wizarding world’s wild adoration of him in the months before the goblins had made it clear what they wanted to pay Harry’s “debt” to them. “There are lots of other people who want to be important to me, too. My friend or my lover or…God knows what else. I don’t want them back.”  
  
“Yes, but I’m different from them.”  
  
“How?” Harry eyed him a little narrowly. “It seems that you started liking me and wanting to be important to me  _awfully_ suddenly, the minute your family made the decision to pay the life-debts to me. That’s like how some of them showed up after the war and said they wanted to help me fight it.”  
  
“Because none of them were me.”  
  
Harry snorted in spite of himself. “I’ll say one thing for you, Malfoy, you don’t lack self-confidence.”  
  
“Stop trying to shove me away like that.” Draco edged forwards, his face intense. “Or are you going to pretend that you regularly kissed these admirers of yours and plotted with them to find a way to free yourself from unwanted slavery?”  
  
Harry felt as though he had forgotten how to smile. “I kissed you because it was part of a plan. And sure, I would have cooperated with a bunch of them if they could have got me out of the goblin slavery, or even  _offered_ to do it. Only  _no one did._ ”  
  
“I didn’t, either.”  
  
Harry reached up and tugged harshly on his hair, hoping that would help soothe both his temper and his confusion. It didn’t, or at least not enough to matter. He leaned forwards and caught Draco’s eye. “Then why did you kiss me?” He was proud of himself for not exploding at Draco, or making Draco explode.  
  
“My parents were the ones who offered to help free you,” said Draco. “And if you think my kiss was only part of the plan, then you’re wrong. Otherwise, the second kiss wouldn’t have happened. I enjoyed it. I wouldn’t do something like that if I didn’t enjoy it. I would have come up with something else.”  
  
Harry shook his head. “But that doesn’t fit with what you said about wanting to be important to me!”  
  
“It doesn’t?” Draco looked as baffled as though Harry had told him he didn’t need a wand for his dueling spells. “Why not?”  
  
Harry bowed his head into his hands and gave a short, comprehensive, but muffled scream. “ _Because_ ,” he said, lifting his head, “you were talking about rivalry or friendship or something. Not what a kiss implies.”  
  
“What does a kiss imply? Something for Gryffindors that it doesn’t for anyone else?”  
  
“It would imply that you loved me,” said Harry flatly. That ought to stop this nonsense. One thing he did know, with all his heart and his conviction, was that Draco Malfoy wasn’t in love with him.  
  
“Then I suppose you’ve loved a lot of people in your life,” Draco said instead, meditatively. “You were in love with Cho Chang, right? That was the rumor going around fifth year, that she was the one you kissed, even if she was crying during it.” Harry lifted his head and opened his mouth to ask who had blurted  _that_ out, but Draco was continuing. “And you must have been in love with Ginny Weasley.”  
  
“None of your business if I was.” Ginny had rather fallen by the wayside in the chaos of the year after the war, as Harry tried to get used to no Voldemort and starting Auror training and then dealing with the majority of the wizarding world betraying him. He wasn’t about to start talking about how complicated his feelings with Ginny were.  
  
“Were you in love with them?” Draco touched his fingers to his chin. “Or me? You  _did_ kiss me back, after all.”  
  
“That was part of the ruse,” said Harry, tiredly. His head really did hurt. Why had he thought talking to Draco would make things  _less_ confusing? Obviously, he was a fool. “You know that.”  
  
“So a kiss can mean more than one thing,” Draco replied instantly. “And I already told you what mine meant. I like you a lot, and I want you to pay attention to me. I  _don’t_ want you to go away, because I wouldn’t want to live in the Muggle world.” He paused, and raised both eyebrows, as though some interesting revelation had just come to him. “Any more than your friends want to, I suspect.”  
  
“None of your business what they do, either.”  
  
Draco sighed, and his face and voice were both more serious when he spoke again. “It’s to do with both of us. You know it is. Yes, perhaps I should have explained everything immediately and clearly up-front, like a Gryffindor that you’re used to, but I’ve done it now. You’re the one who has to accept it or not. Can you at least tell me that you’re reconsidering staying?”  
  
“That’s too big a decision for me to make all at once.”  
  
Draco nodded, as though he had known that would be the result but had thought he would ask anyway. “Then the only thing I ask is that you consider it carefully, and deeply. Don’t hold onto a decision that you made before you got to know me.”  
  
“And you really think that you’re enough to make me change my mind, when my friends couldn’t? All by yourself?”  
  
“I  _know_  I am.”  
  
Harry shook his head. For some reason, he was smiling, which didn’t often happen to him when he discussed his plans to leave for the Muggle world with his friends. “Fine. But right now, I think we’ve talked enough about it. Your dueling training is more important. How much do you know about spells that let you strike from ambush?”  
  
*  
  
Narcissa touched the white roses that the house-elf had presented her with, and tilted them towards the light of the fire. Then she shook her head, and watched the elf’s ears droop. “I’m afraid they are not silver enough for me yet,” she said. “Add some small crystals to the soil, and see what happens.”  
  
The elf bowed to her. “Mistress.” Then it gathered the flowers in a tight bundle, lower lip set with determination, and disappeared.  
  
“Causing distress among the house-elves again, Cissy?”  
  
Narcissa looked up, smiling. Lucius had stepped into her sitting room and shut the door behind him, and she admired the way the sunlight coming through the window shone on his bright hair, making some small sparks leap from it. “Trying to help them breed me the perfect flower,” she said. “The silver rose. I think that the next try might do it. The flowers today really were close to it, but not perfect enough to keep.”  
  
“I don’t know why you want silver roses,” said Lucius, and crossed the room to drop a kiss on her lips.  
  
Narcissa turned and arranged herself on the couch so that Lucius could sit down and have room for his cane. “Because I want their particular beauty in the house,” she said. “We once knew how to grow them. My own ancestors, I mean. It is possible, even if the knowledge has been lost with the centuries.”  
  
Lucius snorted in a way that showed his mind wasn’t on the subject they were supposedly discussing. Narcissa, who knew him well, guided the conversation back to what he wanted to talk about. “So. What troubles you about Harry and Draco?”  
  
Lucius frowned at her. “It does not  _trouble_ me. It makes me wonder how long the charade we are deceiving the goblins with can work, if Draco becomes unwilling to push—Harry to take part in it.”  
  
Narcissa shrugged. “Then Harry can appear with illusions of Draco, and with you, or me. That is the least of my worries when it comes to our con on the goblins.”  
  
“You seem calmer about this than I would have imagined, when they have  _kissed_ each other.”  
  
“It did trouble you more than you showed at the time,” said Narcissa, with a little sigh of satisfaction, and reached up to run her fingers through Lucius’s hair. “I thought so.”  
  
Lucius pulled away and shook his head, putting a stop to the curls and tangles she was trying to create in it. “And this does not  _worry_ you? It does not  _concern_ you that our son may be tying his future to someone who cannot oblige him?”  
  
“If you would tell me what exactly it is you fear, then perhaps I could help,” Narcissa pointed out. “I have always been better with specifics than with cryptic hints.”  
  
Lucius nodded briskly, acknowledging the reference to the hints he had tried to give her when they could not communicate openly, while the Dark Lord was living in the Manor, but refusing to discuss it. “Fine. I am afraid that Draco will find himself romantically attached to the boy. I told Draco that I will understand if he wants to be happy outside the traditions, and I will. But I am afraid that the Potter boy will turn on him and not find a place for Draco in  _his_ life. As far as I know, he is still determined to leave the wizarding world at the end of the year.”  
  
Narcissa shrugged, unconcerned. “We have a year to change his mind, then.”  
  
“ _We_?”  
  
Narcissa took her husband’s chin in her hand and smiled into his eyes. “Yes,  _we_. After all, we can give Harry the indispensable experience of family. And he is still jumpy and skittish and reluctant to indulge in the pleasures that he could take here. If we treat them as ordinary parts of our lives and show him that we can enjoy them as well, perhaps he will calm down. I know that attachment to other people is his strongest driving motive, but that doesn’t mean he cannot enjoy the luxuries of life.”  
  
Lucius only looked at her, and looked at her, until Narcissa laughed and kissed him in the middle of his forehead. “I suppose you will ask me now why we should wish to give him that experience.”  
  
“Yes,” said Lucius. “Perhaps I was too hasty in bringing my fears about Draco to you. After all, just as there is an alternative to Draco appearing with Harry each time the goblins come, there is an alternative to him following Harry into the Muggle world. He may not fall in love with him. He may want something else. He may give up when he realizes that he can’t persuade Harry to stay in the wizarding world.”  
  
Narcissa sighed. “And do you think it would be fair if Harry was driven out of the world he helped save?”  
  
Lucius sighed back at her. “I am unaccustomed to considering fairness in relation to my enemies, even if they are  _former_ enemies.”  
  
“There is a certain kind of honor,” Narcissa reminded him quietly, “that we chose to serve when we chose to repay the life-debts. We could have paid them back with lesser services, or waited until his year of slavery was up. We were the ones who  _chose_ to do this. I wish to continue following that honor wherever it leads us.”  
  
Lucius looked sour. “If you imagine that I would be integral in persuading Potter—”  
  
“I want you to do only what you’re already doing,” Narcissa interrupted him, because she knew from experience that the course he was pursuing now would only lead him in tiresome directions. “Show that you love both Draco and me. Stay out of Harry’s way and don’t antagonize him. Show him that there is a family here, that we have this beautiful Manor and this beautiful life, and that it is attractive.”  
  
“There is a limit to how many luxuries of the Manor he can use. The elves are still uneasy about serving him because they’re uncertain about his status.”  
  
“And because they see that you’re uneasy about him.” Narcissa shook his head when he stared at her. “You forget always about the relationship between the house-elves and the master of the Manor, Lucius. Of course they’re going to take their cue from you, and to think that they don’t know how to treat him well if you don’t know how to treat him. You don’t need to break out in loving demonstrations of affection, but do try to relax a bit.”  
  
“You said I could stay out of his way.”  
  
“If you also relax.”  
  
Lucius placed his hand in his chin and stared off into the distance. “Even if we allow him to enjoy the place, he might be too  _noble_  a Gryffindor to do it.”  
  
“He might,” Narcissa allowed. “But we will not stand in his way, and we will let him make the choice for himself.” She paused. “Won’t we?”  
  
Lucius nodded. “You’re probably right,” he said. “You usually are.”  
  
Narcissa smiled, and drew his head down to rest on her shoulder. She wouldn’t dispute with the words in that particular sentence that she  _might_ take issue with. She knew Lucius was trying.  
  
And if he could be happy, and her son could be happy, even down to the healing of the silly but stinging wound he had received from Harry’s rejection in his first year…  
  
Narcissa saw no reason not to strive for that happiness.


	12. Turning of the Tide

This time, Harry just fed the raven enough bacon and cheese that it landed heavily on his bed and began to drowse with its eyes open immediately. He had spent the morning training Draco, but most of the afternoon in a long lunch and lazy conversation with Narcissa that had made him more and more agitated, even though he thought she meant to relax him. He really needed to hear from his friends right now.  
  
 _Mate,_ said Ron’s handwriting from the beginning, in a way that made Harry tense. Ron didn’t start most letters that way. Had something happened?  
  
 _You sound so depressed when you write to us that I can’t stand it any longer. Are you sure there’s no way we can visit? That’s what you need, a return to your normal life, and not just being cooped up with the high and mighty Malfoys all day long. Hermione can come up with a glamour and an alibi that should fool the goblins if they ever challenge it. Or we could sneak in. We made it into and out of the Manor once before when they didn’t want us to. We could do it again._  
  
Harry smiled, and felt some part of him that had been shriveled and dead and cold even during the meal with Narcissa warming and beating again. Sometimes he thought that he could trust Draco and Narcissa even with his life, like when he showed Draco a painful spell and knew that Draco wouldn’t strike with his full strength. But there was part of him that would always belong to his friends, and only be alive when they were there to comfort him.  
  
That was all the letter said, but it was all it needed to say. Harry reached for the quill he needed to write, not even caring that the raven was too full to fly, and might not take his answer back to Ron and Hermione for some time.  
  
 _Dear Ron (and Hermione)_ ,  
  
 _Yes, it’s lonely here. I don’t think the Malfoys mean to do it, but they just keep reminding me how different I am than them. They don’t see anything strange about having a meal with three courses and house-elves popping up to serve them all the time. The elves don’t try to serve me, so don’t worry, Hermione. But sometimes the Malfoys command them to, and then they don’t know what to do because I’ve only got my own food or clothes or whatever. So they stand there and wring their hands. I feel bad for them._  
  
 _Not being able to go outside is killing me._  
  
Harry stopped there, and stared at the wall. He wondered whether he really wanted to tell his friends that Draco had kissed him.  
  
Then he nodded, firmed his lip, and turned back to the parchment in front of him. Of course he did. They were his friends, and they would share in all his triumphs and sadnesses. They might not know exactly what to make of Draco kissing him, but then again, Harry wasn’t sure that  _he_ did, either.  
  
 _The goblins are still buying this bollocks that I’m a Malfoy slave. Draco helped me stage the latest ruse. We were pretending that I was his completely submissive slave, and he kissed me. Then I kissed him back to convince the goblins. Some of them were looking at me in this way that makes me glad I never experienced being their slave._  
  
Harry stopped and stared at the words again. There. That was the simplest way he could say what he meant.  
  
Except, of course, that it wasn’t all he meant.  
  
 _Draco wants me to stay in the wizarding world, and he keeps telling me that I should relax and enjoy the things the Manor can offer me. Which is nice food, I suppose, and nice clothes. But the elves keep looking at my clothes and squeaking, too, so it’s hard to feel that they really belong to me._  
  
 _I’m just so tired of all of this. Even the ruse to appease the goblins. I know the Malfoys are doing the best they can by me, and I do appreciate it, but I want it to end. I want to run out of the Manor today and tell the goblins and everyone who turned their backs on me when I asked for help that they were_ wrong.  _I want to be free to travel the world and go to the Muggle world._  
  
He hesitated, then added one more paragraph.  _If Draco thinks that kissing me is the only way to keep me in the wizarding world, he’s wrong. But I’ll ask them about you visiting. I don’t want to sneak you in, but I will if they deny me._  
  
He didn’t sign his name, the way Ron hadn’t signed his. There was no need, not when they knew each other so well. He set the letter aside, a little calmer already just from writing it, and sat down on his bed, waiting for the raven to wake up.   
  
*  
  
Harry appeared late for dinner, and halted when he came into the room and saw Lucius sitting at the table. Draco knew that had to be it, because he and his mother were sitting closer to the door, and Harry had appeared nodding to them. He’d only stopped when he fully rounded the corner and Lucius came into view.  
  
Draco’s father turned back to his plate as if he had more interesting things to contemplate than Harry, which was probably true. Draco’s mother stretched out one hand. She didn’t say anything. Draco wondered if Harry would appreciate the silent plea, and how rare it was for one of them.  
  
It seemed he did. He came slowly to his seat, looking back and forth between Draco’s parents as if he didn’t know which one of them surprised him more. He ignored Draco completely while he did it, which was annoying.  
  
At least he took his usual seat opposite from Draco without the fuss that Draco had anticipated. He also took a glass of pumpkin juice that Draco passed him, and sipped it, without taking his gaze from Lucius this time.  
  
“My father sometimes joins us at dinner,” said Draco, too annoyed now to let it pass, even though he probably should have. “It’s something that families do together. I take it you’re not familiar with it?”  
  
“As a matter of fact,” said Harry, with a smile so sharp that Draco flinched, “I’m not. My parents died when I was a year and a half old, you see, and the family that raised me didn’t like me to eat with them at the table.”  
  
Draco blinked, and said nothing. His mother was the one who spoke, her voice soft and gentle. “But that’s terrible. Why did they think they could justify excluding you?”  
  
“Because I had magic, and they were afraid of me,” said Harry. He looked down at the baked salmon that had appeared on his plate without seeming to care about it, which was a crime, Draco thought. One of the first pleasures Harry should take up luxuriating in was the pleasure of food. “I thought it would be different when I came to the wizarding world and realized there were a lot of people, all like me. And then I realized that it wasn’t, and those people still thought I was a freak for something I didn’t know I’d done.” His hand clenched around the fork.  
  
“That  _is_ terrible,” said Draco’s mother, still sounding placid and unruffled. Draco and Harry both stared at her. She sipped from her own chilled drink and didn’t flinch. “Perhaps the best way you can get back at the people who exiled you from their company is to live and enjoy your life. Don’t you agree?”  
  
Harry shrugged. “I’ve managed to enjoy myself more than I thought I was. I had some fun at school. And with Quidditch. And even for a few months after the war.” He picked up the fork at last, but showed no sign of recognizing how good the fish he was cutting into minute bits and putting in his mouth was.  
  
“I meant more than that,” said Narcissa. “Enjoying your life  _now_ , and forgetting about the way they tried to spite you out of it.”  
  
Harry paused, then said, much more politely than he’d spoken to Draco in the training room, “I know that you’re being good to me. But I can’t forget that I’m still a slave in name and have to submit to the goblins, even if it’s just a pretense. It’s preferable to what I would have had. But it’s still uncomfortable.” He paused, then added, “I’d like it better if my friends could visit, though.”  
  
Draco discovered something burning at the bottom of his stomach, and put his hand over it, confused. He couldn’t possibly have food poisoning from house-elf cooking.  
  
But perhaps one could be poisoned by jealousy, which was what he decided a second later that he was feeling.  
  
“What’s the matter?” he asked, his voice snapping like ice despite himself. “ _My_  company isn’t enough for you?”  
  
“No,” said Harry.  
  
Draco flinched again, and dropped back into his chair. His mother was the one who interceded, her voice again as cool as her drink. “I don’t think that insults and comparisons are particularly useful, in this case. What if, Harry Potter, we were to make another bargain? One that involves the visit of your friends, helped by us so that they won’t betray themselves to the goblins accidentally, and you do something in return for us?”  
  
“What is that?” Harry’s hunched shoulders spoke of the kind of thing he expected to be asked.  
  
Draco opened his mouth to say something else about that, about the way Harry kept distrusting them even when they put themselves out for him, but his mother interrupted. “That you relax, stop snapping at us, and attempt to take some revenge on those who have wronged you by enjoying what we can provide you. Even if they never know about it, it is fitting revenge if you stop feeling as much like an outcast as they have made you feel.”  
  
*  
  
Harry bit his tongue on half the things he could have said. He was used to controlling his anger, sort of. It was the way that he had kept from actually melting someone so far.  
  
He thought about what Narcissa was asking. To enjoy life. To take revenge on his enemies. The last part sounded good to him. He just wasn’t sure that enjoying life was the best way to do that.  
  
But he didn’t have many other options. Bringing down Gringotts was unthinkable, not when it would cause so much pain to people who hadn’t hurt him, and even people like the Malfoys who had helped him. He gave a quick nod. “All right. What were you thinking of?”  
  
“First of all,” said Narcissa, smiling at him in that way she had where apparently she beamed with delight at the whole world, “you might learn to enjoy the taste of your food. Eat slowly.”  
  
Harry blinked down at his plate, and then slowly picked up his fork. He stuck it into the fish, watching Narcissa this time. She nodded and smiled. Harry plucked a bite of fish, put it into his mouth, and forced himself to chew slowly, although he thought it was a little silly.  
  
The taste seemed to explode over his tongue, searing it, and not really with heat. Harry gasped. How had he  _managed_ to ignore that?  
  
“Good, isn’t it?” Narcissa picked up her fork in turn. “I thought that the house-elves here would never manage to approximate the food that I enjoyed when I was at home, but they have. If you have a favorite food, you only need to ask for it. They’ll make it for you.”  
  
“But what about formal dinners, like this?” Harry gestured around the table. Draco was still watching him so intently that it was spooky. Harry did his best to ignore that. “And what about the fact that I’m still a slave? Are the elves supposed to  _serve_ me?”  
  
For some reason, Narcissa glanced at Lucius out of the corner of her eye, and he flushed a little. When he spoke, it was slowly, but Harry didn’t doubt that he meant what he said. “The—confusion of the elves over your status is a reaction to my own uncertainty. If I can convince myself to treat you as a member of the family, they should do the same thing.”  
  
 _I don’t want to belong to the same family as you. Treating you as an ally is something different._  
  
But Harry restrained his tongue again, and glanced at Draco. “You were the one who came up with the plan for me to relax in the first place. Do you have other suggestions?”  
  
Draco’s mouth fell open a little, which made Harry feel better. At least it probably meant that Draco hadn’t known his mother was going to suggest this bargain, either, and so they hadn’t sat around plotting against him behind closed doors.  
  
But Draco recovered quickly. “You can go outside and walk in the gardens. You can shower for longer than five minutes at a time. You can ask for the kinds of sheets you want on your bed, and new clothes. You can go to some other rooms of the Manor and admire the beautiful paintings in them. You can—”  
  
“Your father said that I couldn’t go outside the wards,” Harry interrupted. “So a walk in the gardens is out.”  
  
“I am sure that he was not thinking of the complex illusion spells someone can perform that will allow you to do that,” said Narcissa, and gave Lucius a smile of the kind that Harry thought must drive Lucius mental. It would drive  _Harry_ mental. He just hoped that he never married someone like Narcissa. “He or I can perform them, and then you can walk invisible in the gardens and escape the prying eyes of the goblins.”  
  
“Yes,” said Harry. “ _Yes_. I’d love that. Let me try that first.” He didn’t really know what to make of some of Draco’s other suggestions. Changing the length of his showers wouldn’t change the way he lived, and neither would listening to haughty portraits of Malfoy ancestors comment on his looks. But he would like to be outside.  
  
“Let’s go outside after dinner, then,” said Draco. “You can cast the necessary charms, Mother?”  
  
“Yes, of course,” said Narcissa, without blinking, although Harry didn’t know if she’d expected Draco to ask so soon. “In the meantime, let us enjoy the meal, and stop distracting Harry from it. You may write to your friends this evening, Harry, and tell them that they are welcome in the Manor as soon as they wish to come.”  
  
And with that, everyone did turn back to their fish, and to the soup that followed, and the slices of thick white bread with some kind of chocolate drizzled in the center of them, and the candied peaches, and Harry almost would have thought nothing had changed at all. The meal was the same level of formality it always was, and Draco darted little glances at him when he thought Harry wasn’t watching. The biggest difference was Lucius’s presence.  
  
But at the same time, he felt as if he had broken through walls into sunlight.  
  
 _Maybe that’s what they’re talking about. Maybe an internal change really can mean almost as much as an external one._  
  
*  
  
Draco didn’t think he’d ever seen anyone pray fervently, except Aunt Bellatrix when she was hoping that the Dark Lord would look with favor on something she’d done. But he knew he was close to seeing it as he watched Harry stand in the largest garden, under a complicated combination of charms linked to the wards that would make him invisible if anyone approached the house from outside, his eyes shut and his mouth breathing in the air and the light.  
  
A second later, Harry opened his eyes and grinned at Draco. Draco caught his breath.  _That_ was the exhilarated expression that he wanted to see from now on.   
  
“This is wonderful,” said Harry, looking now at the square flowerbeds and carefully-tended roses as if they were a Quidditch pitch. Draco opened his mouth to say that they shouldn’t try to play Quidditch here, but Harry had already sprinted away from him and knelt down next to a rose that nodded and drooped from the weight of its enormous scarlet head. “What’s this one called?”  
  
“I didn’t know you were such a Herbology enthusiast,” Draco said dryly when he’d recovered from his gaping. “And I don’t know. You’d have to call the house-elves who bred the thing.”  
  
“I’m an enthusiast for being  _out_ ,” said Harry, and the smile was gone. Draco winced a little. Damn. He hadn’t meant to do  _that_. “Anyway, call the house-elves, will you?”  
  
Draco shook his head at once. He didn’t want to share his sojourn with Harry. “It’s called a narcissus rose. From the way that it drops like a narcissus drooping over a pond. My mother’s very fond of it.”  
  
Harry blinked, one hand arrested in a caress of the rose’s petals. “You did know? Why would you lie and say you didn’t?”  
  
“Because it’s embarrassing,” Draco muttered, looking away. “The kind of knowledge that can’t do me any good. It’s not like I’m going to be called on to practice Herbology in my mother’s garden, and there are lots of plants here that don’t grow anywhere else.”  
  
“Do you only value knowledge that’s practical?”  
  
And now there was something soft and hurt in Harry’s voice that Draco didn’t understand. He turned around with his hands on his knees, ready to rise and touch him if he needed to. “What do you mean?”  
  
“Do you only value our dueling practice when I teach you spells that have an immediate application?”  
  
Draco frowned again. “No,” he said. “I value them mostly because I get to spend time with you. Although I also hope that you’ll teach me to defend myself as well as you defended me that day in Diagon Alley.”  
  
Harry stared at him again. Then he stood up and walked away among the benches, his head bent as if he was studying the flowers and only the flowers. Draco held his breath, hoping that wasn’t true.  
  
“What’s this one called?”  
  
It might not be true, but for right now, it seemed that interest in the flowers was the only thing Harry would admit to. Draco sighed, stood up, and followed.  
  
*  
  
 _He has to be telling the truth. There’s nothing he would gain if he wasn’t, except spending time with me, and that’s—what he said he wants._  
  
Harry didn’t really want to be thinking this. He wanted to enjoy the sunlight and learn the names of the flowers and be able to fancy that he was back at Hogwarts again. For all that he had suffered death and betrayal and grief there, it was still the best home he’d known, the place he’d been happiest.  
  
But he couldn’t ignore the way that Draco was walking with him, and naming the flowers that he’d admitted he had no interest in, and even smiling at him sometimes when he thought Harry wouldn’t notice.  
  
 _What’s that but interest? Respect?_  
  
A little unnerved, Harry blurted out the first thing that came to mind. “Could we ride brooms out here?”  
  
Draco paused, then nodded. “I think that we’d have to strengthen the charms. These spells probably wouldn’t last up to the darting of a broom, especially as fast as you can fly.”  
  
Harry glanced at him sidelong, and saw Draco looking up at the sky as if he, too, were remembering their Quidditch games. Harry made the offer before he could regret it. “You know, I could probably teach you to fly the way I do, too. It’s just a matter of having good brooms, and your dad can probably still purchase those.”  
  
Draco’s gaze jerked down to him, and for a moment, his eyes were so wide that he looked afraid. Then he shook his head. “You could teach me some moves, but I already know those. That—it’s a natural talent, Harry, what you do. I know. The first time I saw you on a broom, I knew it, that it’s one of those things that just can’t be taught.” He grinned, reluctantly. “It took me eight years to admit it and stop trying to compete with you at least in my head, but I knew first thing.”  
  
Harry took a step towards him, angry for no reason. He was supposed to be enjoying his time outside, he’d thought he  _was,_ but this refusal made him furious. Draco held his hands up and looked at Harry uncertainly through his fingers in response.  
  
“You keep telling me that I shouldn’t give up,” Harry snapped, his voice thick. “Even at something that looks like it’s impossible, and that’s making people regret what they did in not supporting me when they never wanted to in the first place. How can  _you_ just give up and say that you don’t need to try?”  
  
Draco smiled and dropped his hands. “It’s like saying how can I give up on living without magic or taming dragons,” he said lightly. “Some things are just impossible. I know that learning to fly as well as you do is one of them. But you could still get your vengeance. I want to see you succeed in that.”  
  
Harry shook his head, wordless now with rage, and turned his back. He wanted to kick at the dirt. He wanted to grab a broom and race into the sky.  
  
Since neither of those were options, he stalked away, his hands behind his back. Draco followed him, although he didn’t try to talk. Harry did see Draco watching him cautiously out of the corner of his eye, though.  
  
“Are you all right?” Draco asked finally.  
  
Harry spun on him. At least he had the words for his rage now. “You’re trying to make me rethink leaving the wizarding world!”  
  
There. It might sound silly and unfair, but at least it was out.  
  
Draco leveled another intense stare at him. “Is it working?”  
  
“Yes, it’s bloody working,” Harry said, and sat down on a low bench behind him. He thought it was probably meant to let the person sitting in it admire the glowing roses and other flowers banked before it, but he couldn’t see them through his fingers driving into his eyes. “It’s working, when I thought nothing could.”  
  
He felt Draco’s hand beneath his chin, pressing his head back. Harry opened his eyes again, wondering if he had damaged some rare flower without looking where he sat or something.  
  
Instead, Draco kissed him. Determined, gentle, his fingers raking through Harry’s hair. Harry sat there this time, stunned, instead of kissing back, and then reached out and placed one hand on the side of Draco’s head, under his ear. It was all he could do.  
  
The right thing to do, if the way Draco broke away and smiled at him was any indication.  
  
“Just  _think_  about it,” Draco commanded him softly. “The ultimate decision has to be yours.” He paused, and then added, “And I think you’re really considering it now, where you weren’t before.”  
  
Harry nodded, wordless.  
  
“Enjoy the rest of your time in the gardens,” Draco said, and bowed to him—fucking  _bowed_ to him—and went back inside the house.  
  
Harry collapsed on the bench and stared up at the sun, the sky, the clouds, the soft wind. Then he put his hand over his face.  
  
Yes, now he had to think about it, had to possibly change his mind on something he’d considered settled.  
  
And hope bloody  _hurt,_ that was all.


	13. A Visit of Friends

“Ron.  _Hermione_.”  
  
That was all Harry could get out with his throat feeling so strangled, and anyway his friends were hugging him a second later and driving the breath out of his lungs.  
  
Hermione stepped back and eyed him critically when the hug was done. Harry raised his eyebrows at her, only to have Hermione shake her head with her lips pursed. “You look really pale, Harry. I’m not sure that staying inside the Manor all the time agrees with you.” She seemed to utterly ignore Draco, who was sitting at the far side of the room Ron and Hermione had entered by the fireplace, watching them.  
  
“Well, until recently I did have to stay inside all the time,” Harry said. “But we worked out a compromise where I can go outside.” He looked at Draco, who gave him a small smile. Harry had to look away hastily. Looking at Draco brought up the most unaccountable and distracting memories of that kiss.  
  
“ _Compromise_ ,” Ron said, and hissed like an angry dragon, turning to face Draco after all. “When you should just have your freedom to do anything if you want, if that’s  _what_ you want.”  
  
“We rescued him from having to compromise his freedom in a lot worse ways.” Draco kept his hands folded in his lap. “Apart from that, I agree with you, Weasley. It’s why I keep telling him that he needs to stay in the wizarding world. He won’t get his revenge on the goblins or other people if he leaves. And they won’t get to see it even if he does.”  
  
Harry rolled his eyes at Draco. “Yesterday, your mother said that I could get revenge even if I did it during most of this year, and inside the Manor. What happened to that?”  
  
“Oh, I still agree with you,” said Draco, and his small smile grew wider. Harry thought that probably had a lot to do with the fact that Ron was glaring at him, although he  _wished_ it didn’t. “I just think that you can have both, so there’s no reason for you  _not_ to have both.”  
  
“Harry, can we talk to you?” Ron’s hand was closed crushingly on Harry’s wrist.  
  
 _And this means that there’s something else I’m going to have to explain._ But Harry nodded obediently and turned around. “Sure. I’ll see you in a while, Draco, all right?”  
  
Draco inclined his head and snapped his fingers. A house-elf popped up, and Draco turned to speak to it. Harry knew the little creature would probably be detailed to watch them while they were still in the Manor.  
  
Hermione looked a bit ill at that, but Ron dragged Harry out of the room before she could start speaking, into a corridor decorated with dark blue tile outside. Harry was grateful for that. He wasn’t looking forward to meditating between Draco and Ron, but he was looking forward even less to hearing Hermione’s opinions about the Malfoy house-elves. He knew it would upset her that they served him, too, even if it was just doing things like bringing his clothes to him sometimes.  
  
“How could you?” Ron hissed, close to his ear, once they were out in the corridor and he’d firmly shut the door behind them. “They’ve enslaved you!”  
  
A few days ago, Harry had considered that a good argument, too. Or maybe he still considered it a good argument, but he disliked having Ron tell him that living with it was wrong. He yanked his wrist away and stepped back. Ron stared at him in surprise, blinking a little.  
  
 _Oh. Right._ The last time they’d seen each other, Harry had been fighting every expression of his anger, afraid of melting someone. Ron had thought he would be quiet and cold, not fiery, when he responded.  
  
 _Another thing I owe the Malfoys for._ And he did, whether or not he wanted to owe them.  
  
“I know they enslaved me, but only to free me from the goblins’ slavery,” Harry hissed, trying to decide as he did so whether or not he wanted to get into this right in the corridor. “And I still resent some of the restrictions that are popping up because of that, but they’ve done their best to be good to me. And even to ensure that I could get some revenge.”  
  
“Revenge on the goblins?” Hermione spun a curl of hair around her finger as she considered it. “But I don’t know how you could do that without bringing down the whole wizarding economy like they already threatened to do.”  
  
“Revenge that they don’t have to know about,” said Harry. “Learning to enjoy the kinds of luxuries and so on that they would have denied me is revenge.”  
  
He got such a deeply skeptical look from Hermione that he threw up his hands. “What did you want me to do? Brood on this and slowly go insane? Just leave the wizarding world at the end of the year and never change my mind? I thought you would be  _happy_ that Draco is trying to get me to stay!” They had certainly talked to him about staying often enough.  
  
“I would be happy if it wasn’t Malfoy who was doing it.” Ron looked more thoughtful now, but he still flicked a look of dislike at the closed door. “He’s doing it for his own reasons, right, mate? You can still see that?”  
  
“Of course he is,” said Harry, and apparently surprised Ron again, if the way Ron lifted his eyebrows up was any indication. “He wants me to pay attention to him. He’s admitted that.”  
  
“Then why…” Ron let the words trail off.  
  
“Because Harry needed a friend, and there was no one else here,” said Hermione, understanding more quickly than Harry would have thought she would. She still stood there and gave him the kind of thoughtful look he had learned to associate with house-elves, though, so he braced himself for an interrogation. “Have you considered whether you want to go along with someone who only wants your attention, though?”  
  
“If it’s someone I  _want_ to pay attention to, that’s different.” Harry knew she was thinking about the endless shrieking crowds who had wanted his autograph, his time, his kisses, his money, in the days before the goblins announced what the penalty would be for stealing from Gringotts. “And Draco’s kept me from going insane.”  
  
“By giving you something to do.” Hermione’s eyes were soft and understanding. “But what happens when the year is up and you have to make your final decision about whether or not to stay in the wizarding world?”  
  
“He wants me to make a decision about that as soon as possible.”  
  
“Of course he does.” Ron folded his arms. “He probably wouldn’t want to communicate with you if you lived in the Muggle world, the way we would.”  
  
“I don’t know if he would or not,” said Harry. “I know he’d try, but he’s not very good with phones and such.”  _Not that Ron is, either._ But that was something his deference to his best friend’s sensibilities would keep him from saying.  
  
“I just want to know,” said Hermione quietly, “where his kissing you came into it.”  
  
Harry’s face burned red, but he replied staunchly. He had known their questions would get there eventually. “He wanted my attention. And he’s attracted to me. And he wants me to be more than a friend.”  
  
“What about Ginny, mate?”  
  
“What  _about_ her,” said Harry, not a question, and closed his eyes. He had been with her, he had dated her for a brief, wonderful month before the goblins had started pressing him, and now he had no idea what she thought of him. He hadn’t even thought about  _her_ much in the last few weeks. “I don’t know.”  
  
“You should tell her if you’re going to be dating Malfoy, or whatever. It wouldn’t be fair to keep her hoping.”  
  
“Has she said anything about me?” Harry asked, and opened his eyes. He would be honestly surprised if Ginny had. He hadn’t communicated with her at all in the last few months. “Has she started dating anyone else?”  
  
“I think she still thinks about you,” Hermione volunteered.  
  
“But she hasn’t said anything about me?” Harry pressed.  
  
Ron and Hermione exchanged what Harry thought were reluctant glances, and then Ron turned back to him and shook his head. “No. She hasn’t started dating anyone else, and she seemed pretty upset when you were going to be enslaved by the goblins, but she hasn’t said anything. She didn’t even say anything about you being enslaved by the Malfoys instead.”  
  
Harry sighed and closed his eyes again. “Then I don’t consider myself bound to her.”  
  
“I don’t think you have to consider yourself  _bound_ to her.” From the sound of it, Ron was trying to be careful about his words, something that didn’t always come naturally to him. “I mean, you just have to think about dating someone who can you give you real things.”  
  
Harry smiled, although he didn’t open his eyes yet. “The money and the gifts that Draco says he wants to give me aren’t real enough?”  
  
“I mean,” said Ron, and from the sound of it, looked helplessly at Hermione, because she started talking right after that.  
  
“I just think that you need to decide carefully what you’re going to do,” she said. “Not make a decision on the spur of the moment, because you feel angry or happy or pressured right now.”  
  
Harry nodded slowly. “That’s good advice. And Draco would even agree with it.” He thought. Draco did seem to want him to make a choice about staying in the wizarding world or not soon.  
  
“Why don’t you have Malfoy show us around?” Ron suggested, in a way that made Harry think he and Hermione had discussed this before they came over, maybe as a distraction from a conversation that was growing too uncomfortable. “There’s probably places in this house that really are beautiful. Not just rich.”  
  
“I hope that we don’t see too many house-elves,” Hermione muttered. Harry finally opened his eyes and saw her frowning.  
  
“I’ll ask Draco to keep them out of our way,” said Harry, light-headed from relief. This conversation with his old friends about his new—friend, he decided—hadn’t gone too badly. “And I haven’t been everywhere in the Manor. Maybe we could find something that could entertain us for a while.”  
  
*  
  
It was obvious to Draco that Weasley and Granger had come to his house with the intention to disapprove of everything.  
  
Draco wasn’t sorry to disappoint them. He escorted them through dozens of beautiful rooms, playing bland tour guide. His ancestors had already disappeared from their portrait frames, not wanting to look at someone whose family they’d had a blood feud with, and there was nothing else to make Draco blush. The walls were always of fine stone, the rooms were free of dust even when no one had been using them regularly, and there were pretty views from the enchanted windows or fresh flowers growing indoors or something small and surprising all over the place. The way Weasley and Granger gaped was satisfying.  
  
Less satisfying was the way Harry did it.  
  
 _This is his home,_ Draco thought as he opened a door to another bedroom and watched Harry stand in the middle of it, turning slowly around, watching with wide eyes the enchanted waterfall that flowed down one wall to vanish into an invisible sounding pool beneath the floor.  _He ought to know it better by now._  
  
Of course, Harry had really shown no interest in going to any place other than the dueling room, the dining rooms where they ate their meals, his own chambers, and the gardens. And there was the excuse that he’d had to have a small room and coarse possessions when he first came to them, to fit in with the stated objective that he was a slave.  
  
But if they could take the risks of letting Harry communicate with his friends and go outside, they could certainly take other risks, ones that would improve the way he lived.  
  
Draco decided to put the plan into action, and eased up alongside Harry, resting his cheek on his shoulder for a second. Harry was enthralled enough with the room that he just gave Draco a quick glance and a smile, before he went back to staring around.  
  
“Do you like this room?” Draco asked softly.  
  
“Well, it’s pretty,” said Harry, abruptly easing back and turning around as if he wanted to examine the walls. Draco knew he would get no distraction there, no confirmation that the room wasn’t a place of beauty. After all, the walls were made of deep, glowing brown stone with black flecks embedded and gleaming in it. Now and then, one of those walls showed a fleck of gold, too. “But I don’t know what it was used for. Some sort of study?” He looked around as if expecting bookshelves to appear out of thin air.  
  
“It can be converted into various kinds of rooms by the needs of the owners,” said Draco. “If you want it, it could be your bedroom.”  
  
Harry’s muscles stiffened up as though Draco had tried to stab him in the back with one of the spells he’d learned from Harry himself. “There’s no need for that.”  
  
Draco put a hand on his shoulder. Harry shrugged it off.  
  
“Why do you keep denying yourself things you want?” Draco asked. “Whose interests are served by it? Yours? Or your enemies’?”  
  
Harry exhaled hard enough to blow his fringe up. Worse, his friends were now taking an interest in the conversation, turning around and staring at the way Draco stood so close to Harry. Well, Draco assumed that was what the staring was about. He wasn’t interested enough to actually ask them.  
  
“Harry?”  
  
Harry flexed his hands. “You’re sure that there’s no chance you’ll change your minds?” he asked abruptly, turning to stare at Draco. “You and your parents?”  
  
“About what?”  
  
“About my being able to use some of the things you give me to achieve revenge. Live better. However you want to categorize it.” Some of the blood had returned to Harry’s cheeks in an impatient flush, one that Draco thought he understood now. Harry didn’t know how to articulate things like this; he didn’t know how to respond to kindness from anyone except his friends after months of not receiving it. He was frustrated because he didn’t have the words. “You’re not going to decide it’s too much work or not worth it?”  
  
“No,” said Draco.  
  
Harry considered him a second longer, and Draco could see the way his cheek twitched with the prodding of his tongue. He probably didn’t even realize it. Draco settled himself to wait, and shot a sharp glance at Harry’s friends when they would have spoken. Harry had to make this decision on his own.  
  
 _Just like he has to make so many others._  
  
Draco might wish that Harry would get  _on_  with it. But if he forced him to make the choice just when Draco wanted him to, then he would probably lose Harry’s trust. So he waited, and wished that each second didn’t feel like it was breaking apart next to his heart.  
  
*  
  
 _This is so weird._  
  
But he didn’t know why.  
  
Harry felt around in his mind, the way he’d sometimes felt around on his body after Dudley beat him up, looking for broken bones. What was the big deal about letting the Malfoys help him? They’d said they wanted to. Why would he distrust them now? He didn’t  _really_ distrust them.  
  
 _It’s because I would be getting what I want. And that feels weird and dangerous._  
  
It did, after the way that the wizarding world had almost sold him into slavery and after the way that he hadn’t had any choice about fighting Voldemort or going after the Horcruxes or walking into the Forbidden Forest. Well, maybe he could have turned his back and run away if he wanted to be a coward and live with the guilt. But he didn’t want to. He couldn’t. There was a choice about facing Voldemort, yes, just like there had been about going along with the slavery the goblins wanted to inflict on him, but only the choice that was none at all.  
  
And when he put it like that, it was ridiculous. He should have what he wanted, as long as he didn’t hurt anyone else.  
  
“Yes,” he said abruptly, and Draco cocked his head at him, and Harry became aware of Ron and Hermione watching him with curiosity from the other side of the room. “I decided. I do want the rooms.”  
  
Draco gave him a smile so smug that Harry’s hand itched. But he turned around and nodded to Ron and Hermione. “Aren’t these beautiful rooms?” he added, moving his head around in a circle so that they couldn’t doubt what he referred to.  
  
“They are,” said Hermione, and to his disbelief, she was watching him with a small smile, as if she liked the way that he was changing, and changing his mind, while living with the Malfoys. Then he scolded himself for being so surprised. Why shouldn’t a true friend be happy if he was happy?  
  
“There isn’t going to be that problem with the house-elves that you talked about?” Ron asked, looking back and forth between him and Draco.  
  
Draco sniffed. “There are all sorts of deceptions that we thought would be necessary that turned out not to be, Weasley,” he said. “It might confuse the house-elves at first, but give them clear orders and they’ll settle into it. And it’s not like the goblins would get a chance to question the house-elves without our permission.”  
  
“ _About_ that,” Hermione began.  
  
“Don’t, Hermione,” said Harry.  
  
“Why not?” Hermione stared at him. “I thought you would understand even better after you were made to live under slavery yourself! What’s going on with these house-elves is no better than slavery! It never is!”  
  
Harry shut his eyes. “I don’t think that’s how it works,” he whispered. “At least, that’s not how it works for me. What it did was narrow down my sympathies, and make me less kind. Before, I cared a lot about the wizarding world. Now, I want to leave them behind and start over again.”  
  
Draco made a little sound.   
  
“ _Maybe_ leave them behind and start over again,” Harry said, with a slight smile over his shoulder. Draco appeared content with that for now. Harry looked at his friends again. “But either way, I don’t give a shit about them. They wanted me to suffer for them again? Fine. But that’s the  _end_ of it. I don’t want to know about fighting for them again or founding orphanages or donating money or doing anything they want me to do.” He took a deep breath. “And right now, I don’t want to care about house-elves, either. I won’t mistreat them, but I won’t try to free them. I just want to get on with living my life.”  
  
“If you let them serve you, you’re mistreating them,” Hermione began.  
  
“No, I’m not,” said Harry. “Did you notice the way that Winky and Kreacher got upset when they had no one left to serve, Hermione? Did you notice the way that Dobby still wanted to serve people, even though he wanted to be paid for it? Service by itself isn’t the problem. Ordering them to bang their heads into walls or burn their fingers is.” He glanced sideways at Draco. “And I’m sure that the Malfoys don’t order their house-elves to do that anymore. Right?”  
  
“Not since we found out that it mostly results in them running away rather than obeying better,” said Draco, with what Harry thought was probably honesty.  
  
 _More honesty than tact._ But that wasn’t Harry’s problem, either. He faced Hermione again. “One of the ways that I can take revenge and make myself immune to the guilt that they’ll try to inflict is to stop caring so much about what other people think of me,” he said. “And this is the way that I have to do that.”  
  
Hermione caught a wavering breath. Tears filled her eyes. “But you won’t mistreat them?” she whispered.  
  
“I just told you I wouldn’t.” Harry sighed when Hermione looked back and forth between him and Draco. “Draco isn’t corrupting me, Hermione. It’s just—this is what I want to do. Okay? Concentrate on myself rather than elves or goblins or  _anyone_ else. Only fool the goblins when I have to, when they actually show up here. Not give a shit about the people in the wizarding world. Maybe not let them influence what I do anymore, either.”  
  
“Bang on,” said Draco, in such a low voice that Harry suspected he was the only one who could hear it. Draco’s hand was gripping his a second later, down low at his side where his friends didn’t have to look.  
  
Hermione sniffled a little and dashed tears out of her eyes with the back of her hand. “I just can’t bear for you to suffer like this, Harry, and lose so much of yourself to the demands of the situation.”  
  
“The Malfoys have already helped me come back,” Harry said, and held out his hand for her to see. “I would have been in danger of collapsing the wooden walls and turning Draco here to ash a little while ago. But I found a book in a magic library that’s supposed to give the people who read in it what they need, and that book calmed me down. I can get angry now and not worry about turning things into ash.”  
  
“You  _can_?” Hermione immediately lost the tears and leaned forwards. “How does that work?”  
  
“The library gives people what they need, but it’s up to them to apply it.” Harry shrugged. He would like to go back to the library and consult with it on ways to make sure that he didn’t tumble right back into getting angry and turning things to sludge, but right now, other things were more important. “Maybe if you come back here and ask Lucius and Narcissa, they’ll tell you.”  
  
Hermione hesitated.  
  
“It’s okay,” Ron was the one to say in a soft voice, taking her hand and squeezing it. Harry started when he found that sharp gaze turned on him, and realized Ron had been watching him all the time. “Really, Hermione, I think it is. I think Harry’s happy here, even if it’s a kind of happiness that’s hard for us to understand.”  
  
Draco sniffed. “He’ll be even happier once he’s moved into his new rooms and your visits here are routine instead of times for him to get tense and jumpy,” he said, and turned to Harry. “Won’t you?”  
  
Harry looked again at the rooms that would be his, the beautiful brown walls and the slow-tumbling waterfall. This was a kind of sitting room; he hadn’t even gone in yet and looked at the bigger room that he thought would contain the actual bed, or any cupboard space, or the bathroom. But he could see himself being happy here.  
  
“Yeah, actually,” he said, and while he slapped Draco on the shoulder for the smug look he sent Ron and Hermione a second later, he couldn’t deny the sentiment behind it. Draco wanted him to be happy here. He would give a lot to make sure Harry didn’t suffer.  
  
 _He also wants me to stay._  
  
But even that decision, momentous as it seemed, was easy to put off under the realization that so many things could be had for the asking.


	14. Chains of Illusion

“Harry. You need to wake up now.”  
  
Harry started up. He hadn’t meant to fall asleep in the training room; he wondered how he had. Then he remembered going there after lunch for a bit of privacy, and stretching out on the couch that he had conjured yesterday as a barrier—the only one not destroyed by a Blasting Curse—because it looked so comfortable…  
  
But Draco was bending over him and shaking his shoulder frantically, and the couch was no longer comfortable.  
  
“What is it?” Harry asked, reaching for his wand. “Has someone from Gringotts come?”  
  
“Not as bad as that,” Draco said, although a faint grimness to his mouth didn’t fade despite what he was saying. “But a reporter.”  
  
“I’m not talking to Rita Skeeter,” Harry said, putting down his wand again and folding his arms. “I don’t care what the consequences are.”  
  
“This isn’t Skeeter,” said Draco. “Some woman named Roberta Appleby?” His voice rose on the last word, and Harry only looked at him and shook his head wordlessly. He didn’t recognize the name from all the articles written about him and his reaction to the slavery, but on the other hand, he had stopped reading those articles towards the end. They were too depressing, what with being firmly on the side of “maintaining the wizarding economy”—which meant enslaving him.  
  
“I don’t know her,” Harry said. “What exactly does she want?” He knew there were wizards who would probably work for Gringotts as spies, if they suspected the Malfoys weren’t humiliating Harry the way they should.  
  
“To talk to you.” Draco sat down on the couch beside him, watching him carefully. “To see how you’re adjusting to your new lifestyle, as she put it.”  
  
 _No doubt, she’s a reporter,_ Harry thought. Reporters were the only people he knew who talked in that relentlessly softened style, with endless euphemisms, while at the same time constantly asking nosy, intrusive questions.  
  
“What do you think?”  
  
Harry stared at him. “What do  _you_ think? You’re the ones who would have to let her through the wards, after all.”  
  
“But this is ultimately your decision.” Draco took his hand and held it, even when Harry gave an automatic tug backwards with his arm, mostly just to see what Draco would do. “You have to know that. You  _do_ know it, don’t you?” His eyes were steady on Harry’s face. “We’re the ones who have to pretend to be in charge of you, but the only people we  _have_ to fool are goblins. You don’t have to grant some reporter the right to pick at you.”  
  
Harry stared off to the side. Once again, it felt strange to make a decision, the way it had when Draco was asking him if he wanted to change his rooms.  
  
And that decided Harry. He’d had enough of flinching and cowering. He sat up and nodded. “We’ll do it. But I want to make sure that she gets such a story that we’ll send her away instead of making her come back.”  
  
Draco blinked. “How can we do that? The more of a story we give her, the more the other reporters are going to think that they should have the right to come around and ask you.”  
  
“We’re going to have to frighten her,” said Harry. “And that means playing up the side of the relationship that you and I pretended to have in front of the goblins.”  
  
Draco flushed a little. “That might excite her. I don’t see how it would frighten her.”  
  
Harry grimaced. He didn’t like the charade that had sprung to mind, honestly. But if it would save him from having to play the wanton slave in the future, then he was willing to go through it. “This is what we’ll do…”  
  
*  
  
“And  _this_ is Harry Potter.”  
  
It wasn’t as easy to maintain the haughty tone as it would have been eighteen months ago. Draco told himself that didn’t matter. What  _did_ was that he could walk through the corridors and down the stairs of the Manor with Harry crawling behind him, and the illusory chain stretched between them would look natural.  
  
Draco stood there while Appleby stared and stared. He disliked her more with each moment that passed. He would have liked to lash out and smash some of the stones in the walls, even knowing how much his ancestors had labored to construct this Manor.  
  
That had a lot to do with having Harry on his knees instead of Appleby being here, though. So Draco stood and let her look her fill on Harry’s bowed head and panting tongue, and then he gave what would look a tug on the chain. “Harry. Come here.”  
  
Harry crawled over to him. Draco patted his lap as he sat on the last step, and Harry scrambled up and into it. He somehow made even that look natural, although Draco suddenly had more warmth and weight pressed close to him than he’d anticipated, and tickling hair in his face.  
  
He would probably ruin the game altogether if he sneezed. He made sure to lift his head and get his nose out of the way, and to gaze at Appleby in a superior fashion over the top of Harry’s head. Harry leaned more heavily against Draco’s chest, and Draco felt a sensation of pleasure squirm through all the disgust. Despite everything, he was always going to like touching Harry. It was part of the way he was made.  
  
“A few weeks ago,” Appleby whispered, groping for her quill without taking her eyes off Harry, “he was as defiant as anything. Anyone could see that. He didn’t want to become a slave to the goblins even though he was doing it.” Draco held back the sarcastic remark he could have made, and simply waited. “Now he acts like—he likes it.” The last words nearly vanished in the way her quill began to dance over the parchment. “What happened?”  
  
“It’s not what happened,” Draco said. Harry had told him to substitute in his own words if Draco thought of better ones, but for this purpose, Draco thought the ones Harry had dreamed up were sufficient. “It’s what we did to him.”  
  
Appleby’s hand stopped moving, and she stared at him.  
  
“Oh, please,” said Draco, and his hand tightened viciously in Harry’s hair. Harry showed no sign that it hurt, instead just sighing and cuddling closer. “Did you think I would pass up the chance to tame my former rival and make him submit? I’m paying him back for constant humiliations in the classroom and on the Quidditch field. The Great Harry Potter got all sorts of special treatment at school. I’m teaching him that not everyone thinks he’s special.”  
  
Appleby shuffled and finally sat down on the floor, since Draco was meeting her in the corridor at the bottom of the staircase where there were no chairs. “I never did think about it,” she whispered, as if that admission made her contemptible. “But—don’t you feel sorry for him? Don’t you think he’s suffered enough?”  
  
 _Why does that matter, when I’ve already given her an answer she should believe?_  
  
But Draco knew the answer, as distasteful as he found it. This was what the reporters called “human interest,” and which Draco thought of as another name for gossip. Plumb deeper and deeper, and find all the bleeding wounds, all the things that made people flinch, until they could take the weeping victim or the complaining soul almost tenderly apart.  
  
“No,” said Draco. “He hurt me. He was under my mercy and control. My parents leave him more and more up to me, you know. And they were content to let me break and rebuild him. He still serves them, that way.”  
  
Appleby trembled a little. Draco resisted sneering because he had foreseen that he might want to. He looked down at Harry in his lap, instead. He was talking about conquering this man—as if he could—and Appleby reacted with a fascination that was almost sexual. It was there in her wide eyes, her shaking handwriting, and the way she spoke with a slurred voice a moment later.  
  
“B-but…you didn’t do anything special to break him? I know that you were renowned as a torturer for the Dark Lord…”  
  
 _For bringing that up, you deserve anything I can give you._ Draco touched Harry’s hair again and channeled all the rage and frustration that came from watching Harry crawl on his knees into a lean forwards and a wink at the unwilling Appleby, who looked fascinated again anyway.  
  
“It’s not torture that I used on him,” he said. “It’s kindness.”  
  
Harry stiffened against him for a second, and Draco heard the hitch in his breath. This was the part that came closest to the truth, and the part that would be hardest for Harry to hear, even though he was the one who had come up with the plan. Draco merely raised his eyebrows and went on stroking Harry’s head and neck, waiting for him to relax again.  
  
They didn’t have to worry, though. It was doubtful that Appleby had eyes for anything except Draco.  
  
“But what does that mean?” she asked, once again whispering, as if Rita Skeeter would walk in any second and take over the interview from her. “He’s known kindness in his life. He was one of the most compassionate wizards in the world, just a few weeks ago. He’s the one who heroically became the sacrifice for all of us, so that the goblins wouldn’t take everything away from wizards…”  
  
Draco cradled Harry against his chest, unable to respond until he knew that he wouldn’t draw his wand and curse her.  
  
 _Now they care? And they think that any kindness Harry experiences is just the kindness he_ feels?  
  
Draco dispelled his rage by thinking about the fact that at least this biased view of Harry meant he and Harry’s friends—and maybe Lucius and Narcissa—were the only ones who knew the real Harry. Harry must never have revealed to anyone else how deeply a little simple kindness and a few presents could affect him.   
  
What Draco knew, he would protect. But the strongest lie was blended with some truth, which was why Harry had come up with this tactic in the first place.  
  
“He has known little kindness in the midst of war,” he said, and Appleby flinched at the way he hissed at her. Good. Maybe Draco could make her think about some of her choices, or reconsider what she would have written about.  
  
“I didn’t have much to do.” Draco stroked the back of Harry’s neck. There was utter stillness beneath his hands now, as if Harry was waiting to see what would happen. At least he kept his face pressed into Draco’s neck, which meant he didn’t have to deal with any of the stupidity that he would if he was looking at Appleby. “All I had to do was speak gently to him, and prove that he wasn’t going to be put out of the house or locked up in chains in the garden, without shelter. Food and having a place of his own did the rest.”  
  
“You mean that he’s not locked in the cellars?” Appleby tilted her parchment as though she was reading something written down on it. “I thought that someone said he was.”  
  
For a second, Draco worried that they had said that to the goblins, and he wasn’t remembering to match up their stories. But he sat further up on the stairs than Appleby’s position on the floor, and he could see the parchment. It was blank.  
  
 _She’s trying to make trouble. Or trying to make her story more interesting._  
  
The difference didn’t much matter to Draco. With hatred still boiling in the bottom of his stomach, he was nonetheless able to lower his voice and speak softly. “You’re mistaken. Or someone wanted you to become interested in writing the story by making up dramatic details. Of course we didn’t do that. We would never have gained the confidence of a willing slave if we had. And we wanted him  _very_ willing.”  
  
Once again Appleby seemed poised between leaning in and flinching away. “About that,” she said. “I thought—I heard—”  
  
She paused again. Draco refused to make it easier for her. He held Harry and stroked him, and Appleby finally stumbled into the words. “I heard that he was your lover.”  
  
“Can you use that word for the relations between a slave and its owner?” Draco shook his head. “That’s not the way I would describe it.”  
  
Appleby didn’t notice the shiver of tension that disturbed Harry’s body, but Draco did, and bent down and hissed into his ear. He took care to make it sound like generic shushing noises, but he did manage to say, “Just a moment.”  
  
Harry considered, and then relaxed back against him. Draco choked on his own breathless realization of how much trust that took, but Appleby was rattling on again, and he couldn’t concentrate on what it meant for long.  
  
“Then it’s true that you made him sleep with you?” Appleby licked her lips. From the expression on her face, she would ask him for a description of the bed where he fucked Harry next.  
  
“I didn’t  _make_ him do anything,” Draco said, and shook his head at her gape. “Haven’t you been listening to me? That would be against the whole system of what I’m doing here.” Harry twitched again at the word “system,” and Draco touched his cheek. The only good thing about this charade, other than it maybe making other reporters leave them alone for a while, was that he could touch Harry in comfort and have it be mistaken as something else entirely. “I made him want it. You could put it that way.”  
  
Harry said nothing, but Draco saw a trickle of blood on his cheek a second later. Harry must have bitten through his lip, or maybe his tongue. Draco cupped his hand over it, silently cleaning it away before Appleby could see it.  
  
“Yes, yes, I see,” said Appleby. “But I just—forgive me, but reports about you after the war said that you weren’t that formidable.”  
  
Draco sneered at her. “And why would I want to reveal myself in detail to anyone who hates me?”  
  
Appleby nodded and began to write again. Draco waited, but she didn’t ask another question for more than two minutes, her head still bowed. He decided that the interview had lasted long enough, and shifted under Harry. Harry promptly slid out of his lap and down onto the floor, crouching at the end of the length of fake chain again.  
  
Appleby eyed him for a second, then looked at Draco in a timid manner that he didn’t recognize until she asked, “One photograph?”  
  
 _No. Never. Not of Harry when he looks like that._  
  
Somehow, Draco managed to turn the fury into a small smile and a voice of whip-like scorn that made Appleby’s hand drop numbly back to her side. “I’m afraid that I don’t share pictures of my pets.”  
  
“Oh.” Appleby stood this time and scrambled away from Harry as if she was afraid of what Draco would do if he saw her knee touching him. “I understand. I—yes. I’ll go now.”  
  
“Do that,” said Draco. “And tell anyone else who wants to see for themselves how Harry Potter is treated that I’ll  _not_ accept someone just walking up to the doors again. I wanted the public to understand what has happened here. I have no reason to tolerate nosy questions.”  
  
Appleby actually bowed and held the bow for a second, before she scurried off. Draco watched her go. He had never actually mastered human-to-animal Transfiguration, but he wished he had. She would make a better rat than human being.  
  
They remained still until a house-elf named Joz appeared and said in his squeaky voice, “Madam Appleby is being gone, Master Draco.”  
  
“Thank  _fuck_ ,” Draco said, and cast the spell that dispelled the illusion-chain, at the same moment as Harry rose smoothly to his feet.  
  
Harry’s face was blank, and Draco hesitated, then reached out with his magic sensitivity, which he had tried to keep dimmed around Harry since that first painful exposure. He shivered backwards a second later. Harry didn’t feel spiky, the way he had when he was seething silently in the bank, but he was cold. Draco might as well have crushed a chunk of glacier ice over his head.  
  
“Harry?” he whispered.  
  
“I appreciate what you did.” Harry said the words in a blank-metal way, not looking at him. “But I need to be alone right now.”  
  
“I think that’s a bad idea.” Draco rose to his feet, careful to keep his hands out to the sides, not because he wanted so badly to touch Harry, but so that Harry could see them and keep them under observation. Harry snapped his head over to look at them like a bird. That scared Draco more than the way he had spoken had. He said the first thing that came to mind. “Would you like me to take you back to the library?”  
  
Harry had to come back to being human for a second, if only because Draco knew he’d startled him. “The library?” He turned his head as if he thought that one would be appearing on the wall beside him.  
  
“The library where you found the magic book that you said calmed your temper,” said Draco. “We could see if the book has anything else to tell you.”  
  
“I think it only works once.”  
  
“Why? Did my father tell you that?” It would have to be Lucius, because Draco had never been in the library himself, and didn’t know exactly how it worked.  
  
Harry squeezed his hands over his face. Draco relaxed a little. He knew Harry was upset, but as long as it wasn’t staring into the distance with that desert gaze, and then running away…  
  
“No,” said Harry. “He didn’t. I just assumed that the book had given me all the help it could.”  
  
Draco reached out with one hand, and took his, prying it gently away from Harry’s face. Harry still stood there with his head turned to the side, not looking at Draco. Draco let it happen. He was happy enough to have Harry willingly touch him. “I don’t think that’s true. Even if it is, we might as well go and look, right?”   
  
 _I just don’t think you should be alone right now._  
  
But he also didn’t think it would be wise to say that aloud. Harry held a private little debate in his mind, then said, “All right.”  
  
Draco guided Harry gently ahead of him, with a hand poised above the middle of his back. Harry bowed his head and walked in silence. Draco didn’t chatter. They would have other things to talk about when they go to the library.  
  
 _He trusted me enough to let me do that, and then to still let me near him._  
  
Draco wondered for a second if Harry would have trusted even his two friends that much, and then dismissed the notion. The important thing was that Harry had done it, not whether he trusted someone else more.  
  
That was what Draco wanted.


	15. A Web of Stories

“Breathe for a second. Just breathe.”  
  
Harry wanted to snap that Draco bloody Malfoy didn’t have the bloody right to tell him what to do, but that was the flame of anger roaring in him, the one that would do no good if he let it out now.  
  
Instead, just for the novelty of it, he tried doing what Draco told him to do of his own free will, and not because they had to put on a pretense to fool someone else. He turned around and leaned on the library door, breathing.  
  
He could feel Draco beside him and hear him softly clearing his throat, but Draco didn’t try to reach out and touch his shoulder. Harry thought that was wise. He shifted his balance and concentrated on nothing but the way his chest fluttered with his breaths. In through his nose, out through his mouth. Slow and steady, like the turtle in the Muggle fairytale. He needed to think about that, about the slow plodding rhythm of a turtle’s legs. It got there in the end. And he didn’t need to race to the end on this particular track. He had someone right here who could alert the house-elves if he started hyperventilating, and they would probably come around and throw water on him or something.  
  
That thought made Harry smile, and he decided that he was probably ready to face up to reality again. He turned around. Draco hovered next to him, head darting a little as though he thought it would help to examine Harry’s face from several different angles.  
  
That made Harry smile, too, and he put out one hand, as much to hold Draco still as anything else. “I’m all right. Stop making me dizzy.”  
  
“If you can make that kind of remark, then you are,” Draco said, contented, and straightened up. “Now. Where was the book that you found with the story that calmed you down?”  
  
Harry frowned. “It was right on the podium there…”  
  
But there was no podium, and no book open on it. Instead, Harry saw a lazy swirl of golden light and dust in the middle of the room, as though the library was considering them, and what to do now that there were two of them.  
  
Draco frowned imperiously and lifted a hand to face the light. “I am a Malfoy and a member of the bloodline that built this house, and I  _order_ you to show us what we need.”  
  
The golden light winked out.  
  
“I don’t think that’s the way it works,” Harry said, rolling his eyes a little. Maybe the charade had gone to Draco’s head and he thought he could just order around anything he wanted.  
  
“It should be the way it works,” said Draco. “There’s a magic library in our house that just does whatever it wants? How do my parents  _put up_  with that?”  
  
He sounded genuinely horrified. Harry had to shake his head, though. He had no idea what kind of relationship Lucius and Narcissa Malfoy had to this library, if they had one at all. Lucius had sounded as though he didn’t visit it much, anyway.  
  
The golden light began to shimmer above them again. This time, it bent away from Draco like a drifting spiderweb and landed on Harry’s head in a halo of radiance. Draco folded his arms and leaned back on the nearest shelf.  
  
Which meant it was up to him, Harry supposed. He cleared his throat. “I’m still…rattled by something that happened to me this morning,” he said. He knew he could probably speak about it more openly than that, but he just couldn’t, not in front of Draco. “Is there something you can show me, tell me, that will help me calm down?”  
  
For long seconds, glittering lights raced around the halo, and Harry thought it was going to flash. He flinched a little, since it was right above his eyes, but the lights calmed down even as he thought that. Then a golden finger of light snapped out of the halo, pointing straight ahead, at one of the shelves.  
  
Harry turned his head. One of the books was caught in the beam, the flaking letters on the binding catching and holding the light.  
  
“Thank you,” Harry said, and stepped forwards, placing his hand firmly on the book. Almost at once, the halo on his head disappeared. Harry pulled out the book and looked at it dubiously. He couldn’t read the title, the letters were so far gone, and the weight of the book was the kind of thing that suited Hermione more than him.  
  
“I wonder why a Malfoy library answered to you and not me.”  
  
Draco looked as if he was brooding. Harry bit his lips firmly to keep from smiling. “Maybe because I was the one who asked nicely.”  
  
“The way I asked was nice enough.”  
  
Harry ignored that, too, and instead opened the book. It lay awkwardly across his hands. He finally carried it over to the nearest table to read it, bending down to make sure that he could see all of the pages equally well.  
  
The dense text ran across the pages in huge paragraphs that seemed to have no break. Harry finally just flipped back to the beginning and plunged into it.  
  
 _To tame the horrible temper and cure bad dreams, it is necessary to be absolutely honest._  
  
Harry wrinkled his nose a little. It was true that he sometimes still had nightmares from the war, but they didn’t have anything to do with why it was so hard to face that reporter and hear those awful things from her mouth. And he  _knew_ that honesty wouldn’t help with his anger. He had been honest with his friends about wanting to reduce the goblins to grey sludge, and they still hadn’t been able to help him cope with his temper.  
  
But on the other hand, he didn’t think this library that had helped him once before would show him a book that had  _nothing_ to do with his current predicament. He turned a few more pages and once more jumped in at random, hoping that would help more than targeted searching. Well, it might. You never knew if the library had predicted he would do this and so given him a book that would reward it.  
  
 _Absolute honesty can let other wizards know when they are in danger from your magic and your temper. It can let you know when you must go apart from others in order to calm down. And it can let you know when you need company._  
  
Harry hesitated. It was true that he had wanted to run away, to get away, the moment Draco and the reporter were done talking, but on the other hand, it was also true that Draco had been right: he probably shouldn’t spend much time alone.  
  
On the other hand, he didn’t know how to follow the rest of the book’s advice. He  _had_ been honest with the Malfoys about the dangers of his magic, and he didn’t feel that anger so much anymore. And he had been honest with them about wanting revenge against the goblins. It wasn’t their fault if that felt so difficult as to be impossible.  
  
He stood there holding the book and staring down at it, and so didn’t notice when Draco moved up beside him, fingers trickling over Harry’s shoulder blade. He finally started and looked back, and Draco met his eyes evenly.  
  
“I think you ought to think about what else it could mean,” he said.  
  
Harry snorted. “Did you read this over my shoulder?”  
  
“This part.” Draco reached out and let his finger fall delicately onto the very line Harry had been contemplating. “And you haven’t been honest with us about everything, you know.”  
  
Harry folded his arms. “Name one thing that’s important that I’ve lied to you about.”  
  
“People might think very different things are important.” Draco’s eyes were liquid as he gazed at Harry. “I thought that the rooms you lived in in the Manor were important, and you didn’t agree until you finally made that choice to move into the rooms with the waterfall. And you think that your friends are more important than I think they are.” Harry rolled his eyes, but Draco persisted in a calm, careful voice. “What else could you be honest about? What upset you the most about that reporter?”  
  
“That she assumed I was just a  _slave_ ,” said Harry, and felt his anger begin boiling in his stomach again. He hastily removed his hand from the book and stepped away from Draco, just in case his magic dangerous to organic beings decided this was a good time to return. “That I was an object she could talk to you like that in front of, and I wouldn’t notice or care.”  
  
“But doesn’t that make sense?” Draco followed him, making Harry’s moving away useless. He cast Draco an irritated look, but Draco didn’t seem to notice. “We wanted her to think that, and she isn’t very smart. And you went from being a slave to the goblins to being a slave for us, as far as most people know. Isn’t that what you want  _anybody_ to think? Why does it make you so angry? It would be worse if they didn’t think it.”  
  
“I know that,” said Harry, and felt as if the illusory chain that they had used when the reporter was here had become real. “I know all of that.” He shrugged against the feeling of constriction and turned his head aside when he noted how intently Draco was staring at him. “I know all that. I should be used to it by now. I know that.”  
  
“But you don’t like it anyway,” Draco said.  
  
With that much understanding, Harry thought he wouldn’t have to explain himself, but apparently he was wrong. “Why?” Draco added a second later.  
  
“It makes me feel like nothing’s ever going to be enough,” Harry said, when he had waited, and Draco had waited, and he decided that he’d like to give Draco the answer. “I could give up my  _life_ for the wizarding world, and that’s not enough. Someone’s always going to demand something else. I could maybe get used to that when I was a kid because I thought it would end someday, but—”  
  
He hesitated. Draco did, too, before he finally asked, “Do you mean that you could get used to it when you were a kid at Hogwarts fighting the Dark Lord?”  
  
Harry grimaced at the book. If this was what it wanted him to be honest about, then he didn’t much like its advice. But the book just lay there, in a silence Harry thought was smug.  
  
“No,” Harry said. “The way I was when I was a kid at my relatives’ house, and I had to cook and clean for what they told me was my keep. They kept stressing their charity in taking me. I thought I’d never get away. I didn’t know anything about my parents or Voldemort or the wizarding world until I was eleven. Then I could get away. But this? How can I get away from this?”  
  
*  
  
Draco winced. He understood what Harry meant now when he said that he really didn’t want to have to do household chores.  
  
 _Stupid Muggles. As if there weren’t plenty of families in the wizarding world who would have been happy to have Harry Potter growing up in their households._  
  
Draco was politically knowledgeable enough now to admit that growing up there might not have been much better for Harry than growing up with Muggles. Someone would surely have tried to use him. But he didn’t think they would have worked him to death.  
  
“That’s what the book was recommending honesty about?”  
  
“Yeah, I reckon.” Harry hunched his shoulders. “I don’t like being  _restricted_.”  
  
“Or told to obey curfew, or other rules,” Draco muttered. He could see a whole different side to Harry now as he thought about that information. He had thought at school that Harry was always breaking the rules because he wanted to show off how much braver he was than anyone else, and since the war, he’d considered it might have been because he was fighting the Dark Lord. But it seemed it was really something else.  
  
“Yeah, maybe.” Harry turned and stared at him. “And I don’t know what this has to do with the charade we had to put on with that reporter. Because I know that we’ll just have to put on  _another_ one, and it’s not going to matter much if I hate it. I’ll do it because I have to.”  
  
“I think I understand what the library is trying to do,” Draco said, and ignored the tingle of golden light from behind him. He thought he did, and if the library disagreed, then it would just have to respond to him the way it should have in the first place. “Come up with more things that you’re doing because you want to, not because you have to.”  
  
“What more is there?” Harry shook his head. “I have rooms I like, and I can go outside now, and I can have my friends visit. You keep me busy. The food’s fine. What else is there that I can do?”  
  
Draco would have liked to say something about how  _he_ would never be content with such a limited lifestyle, but he knew that he didn’t have the words to say it the way he meant. It would only come across as insulting Harry.  
  
“You don’t want  _anything_ more than that?” he asked. “Even to be free from the desires of the wizarding world, which you were saying you did a second ago?”  
  
“That’s why I was going to go to the Muggle world. Why I  _have_ to go to the Muggle world.”  
  
Engaging with Harry on that topic promised nothing good, either, so Draco likewise ignored it. “What if we could do something to get you free of it and let you stay here, too?”  
  
Harry looked at him suspiciously. “Stay in Malfoy Manor, or the wizarding world?”  
  
“Both,” said Draco. “Anything. Whatever you want. Like you said, you gave up enough for them. They shouldn’t have the right to demand anything else. You should be able to do whatever you want.”  
  
Harry bowed his head and shuffled his shoulders as if he was cold. “But nothing will make them do that. Even if we frighten them away like we did with this reporter, that’s only temporary. They’ll just come along when they’ve got over the fear and request something else.”  
  
“You know,” said Draco, after a few minutes while he thought and Harry stood there gloomily, “I thought your magic was pretty scary.”  
  
“Yes,” said Harry. “But if I actually used it against someone, it would just get me locked up in Azkaban. And I don’t want to.”  
  
Draco nodded. He knew that if Harry  _had_  melted someone or turned them to ash, it would only ever have been an accident. “There’s no law that says you can’t keep the threat of it hanging over their heads, though.”  
  
“Yes, there is,” said Harry, jumping as though Draco had pricked him with a pin. “There  _must_ be. There are laws against threatening people in the Muggle world.”  
  
“There are?” Draco stared in wonder. The only thing he could think was what stupid laws those must be. “Well,” he said, after thinking for a second, “just telling the reporters how dangerous your magic is and how you suppressed it for the good of the wizarding world, but you won’t hesitate to let it out now, would probably do it.”  
  
“But someone wouldn’t believe me, and they would challenge me, and then I would  _have_ to either become a murderer or get besieged by them again,” muttered Harry, looking miserable.  
  
“That’s when you melt their books, or their paper, or their clothes, or whatever else they bring with them that’s subject to your magic,” Draco explained patiently. He thought of something. “You could probably destroy their wands, couldn’t you?”  
  
“Yeah,” said Harry. “But there’s a law against breaking someone’s wand unless they’re a criminal, too…isn’t there?”  
  
“What matters is the  _way_ you do it,” said Draco, happy now. “If you steal someone’s wand and snap it, yes, that’s a crime of the highest order. But if one of your wards breaks the wand of someone who was trying to sneak into your house uninvited, that’s not your fault. And you could probably create wards like that. Maybe empower them with separate bits of your magic. You might as well make the problems that you have with your temper work for you,” he added, because Harry was blinking.  
  
“I suppose,” said Harry. His tone was so distant that Draco might have bristled, but right now, he  _wanted_ Harry to think about what he was going to say. So he waited, and eventually Harry blinked and looked at him again. “You don’t think that would make them call for me to be sent to Azkaban?”  
  
Draco smiled grimly. “They’re already ignoring a lot of laws in the way that they were ready to let the goblins enslave you. And so was the Ministry.” He had thought of something else, something that might not appeal to Harry, but Draco was willing to mention everything he could if it would get Harry to stay. “You know how people like my father managed to live untouched for a long time even though everyone knew they were probably guilty? Because he had money and power?”  
  
Harry nodded. He was scowling a little now.  
  
“ _Well_ ,” said Draco, deciding to ignore recent history because they’d already done so much ignoring of it so far, “your magic and your celebrity status would probably protect you the same way, if you wanted to actually use them. Set up a protected place and spend most of your private time there. When you do go into public, make sure anyone knows what will happen if they get too close to you with their notebooks and their quills and their wands. And I think people will start leaving you alone.”  
  
Harry bit his lip. “That would mean I’d be pretty lonely…”  
  
“You were willing to go into the Muggle world and leave everyone except your friends behind. At least this way, you would be around  _some_ sympathetic people.”  
  
“That’s true,” Harry said, looking struck, as if he had never thought of it that way before. Draco had to smile. Of  _course_ he hadn’t. It took the genius of a Malfoy to think through things that, sometimes, were right in front of you.  
  
“Now,” said Draco, when he had let some silence pass, “we could also try to get some more direct revenge on the goblins, if that would help.”  
  
Harry was alert and intense in seconds, focused on Draco in a way that told Draco how badly he’d like that vengeance. “But you and your mum said that I should stay in the house and enjoy myself privately and take revenge that way.”  
  
 _He is a lot more vengeful than most people think. It just takes a Malfoy to see it._ Draco smiled at him. “But when the year is done, they can’t do anything to you.”  
  
“They could take my money.”  
  
Draco snorted. “Then you remove your money from the bank before they can. That might be enough by itself, in fact,” he added, thinking about that, the image of other wizards scrambling to imitate Harry, either slavishly or because they thought he knew something they didn’t. “If you think about it.”  
  
“I want something more than that.” Harry’s eyes were bright as a hunting hawk’s.  
  
Draco nodded, pleased. “Then that gives you a goal to work towards, and something else to want. Think about it. What else can we do?”  
  
Harry started stalking back and forth, waving his hands, consumed by private thoughts. Draco glanced back at the book, lying open on the table.  
  
 _Thank you,_ he thought to the magical library.  
  
A small twinkle of golden light shone above his head in answer.


	16. Long-Term Revenge

“I understand the last charade was distressing to you, Mr. Potter.”  
  
Harry sighed and stared at his plate for a second. He supposed he should have suspected that Narcissa would talk to him about this, and he ought to have suspected it even more when he saw that they were the only ones at breakfast. She probably wouldn’t have talked about it in front of Draco.  
  
“It was embarrassing,” he told his plate. When he leaned back, the food vanished. The house-elves had already learned that he never ate much in the mornings. He looked across the table at Narcissa, who sat with her own still-loaded plate and an arrested look on her face that made her look like a living portrait. “And I can’t stand it that someone thinks I’m just this cringing little thing.”  
  
“Because you have more courage than that?”  
  
Harry studied her for a second, but she seemed genuinely interested, not just asking to ask, so he finally shifted and muttered, “That, but also because it’s—the most humiliating interpretation of slavery that we could come up with.”  
  
“That makes it all the more likely to be believed,” Narcissa countered, as though reassuring someone of their fitness for a position as servant in the Manor. Her face and voice were both calm. “They want to believe that we are treating you badly, that you are not only a slave but an object.”  
  
Harry closed his eyes. “That’s probably the hardest of all.”  
  
“Why?”  
  
The calm voice made Harry answer before he thought about either his language or who he was talking to. “Because it means they never did give a shit about me, ever. It means that they’re more interested in all the stories about me, the scandal, than they are in the real person I am.”  
  
Then he  _did_ remember who he was talking to, and winced and opened his eyes. “Sorry, Mrs. Malfoy.”  
  
“Call me Narcissa.” Narcissa was, currently, looking highly entertained as she ate a few last delicate bites of the salad she seemed to prefer in the mornings.  
  
“Then call me Harry, not Mr. Potter.” Harry folded his arms and scowled at her.  
  
Narcissa laughed aloud. “If they could see you now, they would decide you were more intriguing as your real self. You never look as if you’re going to destroy anything in your cringing persona.”  
  
Harry glanced away. “Maybe I should want them to see the real me, but I don’t. I don’t care about them seeing me as I really am, if they’re so ready to believe all sorts of false shit about me.” It did feel good to swear, to let things out like that.  
  
“Draco did mention something about how you might let them see a more savage side of you.” Narcissa tipped her cup at him. “If this is the beginning of that, I approve.”  
  
Harry regarded her warily. “Even though I’m swearing at you and you might have to worry about me destroying your house?”  
  
“Some people value other things more than property,” Narcissa said. “Like honor, and life-debts, and watching those life-debts well-repaid.”  
  
Harry made a little noise and flopped his head down into the middle of his arms. “I’m not just a life-debt.”  
  
“I know. For my son, you have become more than that.”  
  
She kept doing that quicksilver thing, where she would shift the subject Harry thought they were discussing in a totally new direction. He looked up and blinked. “And you don’t mind that, either? Even if it would mean Draco not holding onto all the Malfoy traditions?” He didn’t know yet what he and Draco would end up being to each other, but he knew that he wouldn’t put up with someone who would just turn out like another Lucius. He didn’t know how Narcissa dealt with that bastard.  
  
“I don’t know yet what will happen,” said Narcissa, sipping her drink. “One never does. But we made the choice, took the risk, to bring you into our house, and I am not unhappy with the results so far.”  
  
She gave him another gentle smile, and flipped open the book that lay beside her plate, which looked as if it had illustrations colored like some of the pictures in medieval books. For all Harry knew, it  _could_ be medieval. The Manor might have older things in it.  
  
He escaped out the door, glancing over his shoulder. Narcissa never looked up, never acted as though she was interested in anything but the contents of the book and the cup.  
  
And he had thought  _Draco_ was weird. He didn’t even know for sure what the subject of that conversation had been, but once again, he had the impression that he had learned less from Narcissa than she had learned about him.  
  
*  
  
Narcissa had long ago mastered the trick of concentrating on one thing, or appearing to concentrate on it, while her mind whirled down different pathways altogether. It had served her well when the Dark Lord ruled in the Manor and wanted constant attention from all his followers.  
  
Now, she had a more innocent purpose, but she did not know if Harry would be much less distressed by the object of her focus than the Dark Lord would have been by a lapse of attention.  
  
She was beginning to wonder if they should not only shelter Harry, and help him resist and fool the goblins, and countenance what he and Draco did together as long as Draco was not hurt, but also help him specifically with his revenge outside the walls of the Manor.  
  
Lucius would be against it, she knew. But Lucius was against many things that did not matter. On that score alone, it was not enough to dissuade her from the decision.  
  
She picked up her water and sipped a little more, thoughts of the book slipping away from her mind. Of more concern was the fact that Harry might not have many long-term plans for revenge, and the ones he did have would probably be inchoate. Possibly not likely to work, either.  
  
Narcissa smiled a minute later. She knew that Harry didn’t trust her without reservation, the way he seemed to trust Draco, but he would at least listen. She could make some more suggestions for revenge, ones that might be appropriate, and if he challenged them, it would be with respect.  
  
With that, she turned her mind to the much more pleasant task of coming up with strategies.  
  
*  
  
“You aren’t paying attention,” said Draco. “You need to  _focus_.”  
  
Once, that would have made Harry spring to his feet radiating indignation and determined to show him what was what, Draco knew. Now, Harry gave a sort of exhausted sigh and sagged onto the couch in the dueling room. “I know,” he said. “Those last few hexes weren’t meant to go around you. Sorry.”  
  
He shut his eyes, which meant he missed Draco’s gape. Just as well, Draco decided a moment later. He didn’t want to show Harry less than confidence if he could help it.  
  
“What are you thinking about?” That was his second impulse, to say that. The first one had been to go over and kick Harry, but it probably wouldn’t help. Draco conjured a second couch across from Harry and settled on it to watch.  
  
Harry sighed and stared intently at the ceiling. “The fact that I want revenge now, I’m even starting to think I deserve it based on what you’ve said to me.”  
  
“Yes?” Draco asked a moment after Harry stopped speaking, puzzled. If Harry  _had_ started to accept that he deserved revenge, then Draco saw no reason for mourning that. Celebrating, rather, that Harry was starting to behave like a normal human being who thought he deserved good treatment.  
  
Harry turned his head towards Draco, and there was a glitter of frustrated tears in his eyes that made Draco wince and then sit very, very still.  
  
“But I can’t think of anything that doesn’t backfire,” Harry whispered. “Except what you said, letting them know how dangerous my magic is so that they don’t come near me with their wands and their quills, but even that could backfire. Someone could decide that I was a new Dark Lord and kill me from a distance. How do I keep someone from doing that? How do I keep the goblins from deciding that I haven’t suffered enough when my year is done, particularly if they ever find out about our con?”  
  
“But the bargain was that they have to leave you alone,” Draco pointed out, a little uneasy now. He had to admit that he had only ever thought in terms of fooling the goblins for a year, not permanently defying them. “Even if you had stayed in Gringotts, they couldn’t do anything to you after a year was done.”  
  
“If I really served it,” Harry said softly, standing up and walking over to the wall. An enchanted window opened in front of him, showing a field of corn; Draco knew it meant the Manor was sensing his need. If that alarmed Harry, he didn’t show it. He leaned on the new sill and stared out the window, instead. “But what happens if they find out that I didn’t keep my word?”  
  
Draco swallowed. Well, yes, the revenge of goblins could be terrible. He didn’t really know what exactly they would do, since most of the time their vengeance was on thieves and not people who had broken promises to them, but it was probably going to be terrible.  
  
“Sure, I could terrify them with my magic the same way I could wizards, if I got hold of them.” Harry was talking softly to himself, leaning on the sill and smoothing one hand up and down as though he wanted to stroke the imaginary corn. “But they aren’t foolish enough to come near me, the way some wizards are. They would hide behind all those walls of stone and metal where I couldn’t get to them. They don’t have wands. They wouldn’t want to interview me. They would just want to destroy me. They could do it, couldn’t they?”  
  
Draco bit his lip firmly and shut his eyes. Something was coming, he thought. Some thought, bubbling up from the depths of his consciousness and spreading out across the surface of his mind with aching slowness and smoothness. He would have it in a second. He just needed Harry to be  _quiet_ about it so he could get hold of it.  
  
“And besides—”  
  
“Shut up for a second,” Draco said, and ignored the surprised stare that he could feel moving up the side of his face. Sure, maybe he shouldn’t say that, but wouldn’t it be worth a little temporary discomfort if he could grasp hold of his idea and come up with a good vengeance for Harry?  
  
Maybe Harry agreed, or was curious enough about what was going to happen next to wait. He was still standing there, head canted to the side, when the idea coalesced fully in Draco’s mind and he opened his eyes with a little gasp.  
  
“Why does your magic damage only organic things?” he asked Harry.  
  
Harry hunched like a dragon over a clutch, as though he assumed the question was somehow an accusation. “I don’t know,” he snapped. “I never thought that I particularly  _wanted_ to damage—”  
  
“You don’t know how it works,” Draco summarized, rising to his feet and beginning to pace back and forth. He felt happy, the way he had when he started making plans at Hogwarts on how to take someone down or win a Quidditch game. He hoped that these plans worked out better than most of those had, though. “You didn’t wish for that power. It just showed up one day when you got angry enough, right?”  
  
“Right.” This time, the long, considering stare Harry gave Draco seemed to say that he would at least indulge his speculations.  
  
“Then what you have to do is shape and fold and train it,” Draco said, spinning around. “The book in the library already gave you some ideas on how to calm it down. I told you about using it to scare people instead of destroy them, and you agreed. So you must  _believe_ it can be tamed.”  
  
“Right,” said Harry. “But I would prefer that it was gone altogether.”  
  
“What you need to do,” Draco said, grinning maniacally, “is train it to destroy inorganic things, too. And then you can let it loose on the goblins’ precious money.”  
  
Harry looked at him with a softly open mouth, which Draco enjoyed for the few seconds it took Harry to snort skeptically and fold his arms. “But I still can’t actually destroy anything unless I can get into the bank,” he said. “And they probably have wards they made specifically to keep me out put up.”  
  
“You can reach out from a distance with your magic,” said Draco. “At least, I think you can. I know that the Dark Lord was studying that sort of ritual. Legilimency from a distance. Torture from a distance.”  
  
“No,  _thanks_.”  
  
Draco blinked, brought out of his gleeful trance by the utter disgust in Harry’s voice. “Oh,” he said. “I mean, it wasn’t inherently Dark. You could Heal someone at a distance, too. It’s just a kind of ritual.”  
  
“It must be complicated.”  
  
Draco shrugged. “It is, and you need a powerful wizard to stand at the heart of it, which is the reason that not just anyone performs it every day. But I don’t think that’s really going to be a problem for you, is it?” He let his voice drop, and looked Harry boldly in the eye.  
  
“Well, no.” Harry toyed with a string dangling from his sleeve. Draco wondered how that had managed to happen, in a house where elves cared for all the clothes, and then shook his head. Harry probably carried his own private chaos field around with him. “But it doesn’t mean that I can actually get into the bank.”  
  
“Through the wards? You can practice,” said Draco. “All you need to do is affect a small amount of money to terrify them.”  
  
Harry abruptly turned away and looked out the temporary window again, but Draco had seen his face, the unconscious flinch from deep inside his body, and he stepped up and laid a hand on Harry’s shoulder. “What is it?” he whispered.  
  
“It just never ends, does it?” Harry sounded tired. “I can’t have any peace except by scaring people. I can’t just be myself and have them accept me as someone who’s normal and gets angry sometimes and deserves privacy. I can’t walk away from all this.”  
  
Draco held his breath. That sounded like an acknowledgment that Harry needed to stay in the wizarding world after all.  
  
But Harry said nothing else, and Draco abandoned the thought of convincing him for now. He rubbed Harry’s shoulder soothingly. “I know, but you’re something better than normal,” he said.  
  
“What?” Harry looked at him in a way that told Draco he’d have to be careful about what he said next.  
  
“You’re you.”  
  
That worked. Harry slowly let his shoulders slump back down. “And I suppose if I was normal, then I wouldn’t be caring about revenge in the first place,” he muttered. “I wouldn’t need it.”  
  
Draco grinned. “No, you would have thought about it a long time ago if you were ‘normal.’ But you wouldn’t have the resources that you do to carry it out, either.”  
  
Harry leaned a thoughtful arm on the sill this time. Draco moved up beside him, and waited patiently until Harry stirred and looked at him again.  
  
“I suppose that freedom and privacy based on terrifying people is better than not ever having either one of them again,” he said carefully.  
  
“A  _lot_ better,” Draco agreed. He made sure to put enough fervor in his voice that Harry smiled.  
  
Harry traced a finger along the grain of the windowsill. “And you think that I would really have enough power to use these rituals? If Voldemort didn’t have enough to use them and he was studying them…”  
  
Draco shook his head. “The Dark Lord didn’t use them because he had a thousand and one other calls on his time.” He braced himself and managed to say what he needed to say in a light and joking tone. “It’s not easy ruling Death Eaters and torturing people and trying to conquer Britain and study ancient magic all at the same time, you know.”  
  
Harry stared. Then he leaned forwards and put a hand on the back of Draco’s neck, and drew him into a kiss.  
  
Draco went willingly enough, gasping a little. He hadn’t actually expected Harry to initiate a kiss for a while, and he didn’t understand why it was happening now—  
  
But the thoughts drowned in the sheer feeling of rightness of Harry’s tongue in his mouth, and he slumped witless in Harry’s arms near the end of it, his eyelashes fluttering and his breath coming fast enough to be disgraceful if he was ever going to worry about Malfoy dignity in front of Harry. When he could manage it, he stood upright and stared at Harry in wonder.  
  
“Thank you for being you,” Harry whispered. “I needed to hear a joke then, and I know it’s not easy for you to joke about  _him_.”  
  
Draco leaned his forehead on Harry’s shoulder, utterly content. Yes, it had taken courage, but he didn’t know many people who would recognize that.  
  
Harry stroked his back in silence for a little while, and then asked, “And you would help me study these rituals?”  
  
“Yes,” said Draco firmly. “You have a long time to study them, you know. It’s only been six weeks. We still have most of a year.”  
  
Harry’s hand went motionless for a second. Then he said, “Of course we do,” and resumed stroking.  
  
It would have been wrong to confront Harry before this, perhaps, but Draco saw no reason not to do it now. He caught Harry’s hand in a firm grip and said, “And we have more than a year, if you want it. You can stay here. Or you can stay in the wizarding world. It makes no difference to me where you are. I’ll find you and be with you.”  
  
Harry swallowed. “Your parents might have something to say about me staying in the Manor for more than a year.”  
  
“You mean my father would,” Draco corrected him. “You should know my mother well enough by now to realize that she would be pleased to have you.”  
  
“Right,” said Harry. “I just…Draco, I don’t know.”  
  
“Ten minutes ago, you didn’t know how you would get revenge on the goblins.” Draco put his hands on Harry’s arms to hold him still when Harry made a little withdrawing movement. “We can always settle it later. I just want you to know that you don’t need to make up your mind to walk away because of it.”  
  
Harry bit his lip and looked down. Then he nodded. “We study the rituals, and I teach you dueling, and my friends visit, and I write to them, and you go on showing me the kinds of luxuries that Malfoys live with,” he said, as though he was outlining a timetable to a student at Hogwarts.  
  
“Exactly,” Draco said, and moved forwards again, so that he could stand with his head on Harry’s chest and listen to the thundering of his heart.  
  
Harry’s hand settled lightly in the middle of his back, and he whispered, “Okay. That sounds good.”  
  
Draco smiled, closed his eyes, and basked some more in the rightness of it.


	17. Slow, Like Snakes

“You seem to be happier.”  
  
Harry smiled at Hermione. She was sitting on a chair she’d conjured in his new room, and Ron sat on the bed. Harry had a second chair near the base of the waterfall. It had taken a lot of enchantments to make sure that the water wasn’t going to rot the wood or put mold on it, but it was totally worth it. Especially the little, fresh, cold current he could feel caressing the back of his neck.  
  
“I am,” Harry said simply, and leaned forwards to shuffle through some of the books Draco had delivered to him. Draco had combed through the Malfoy libraries to find everything he could about taming magic talents that showed up spontaneously, or accidental magic that lasted beyond childhood. The results were diverse enough that Harry knew he was going to spend a lot of time researching.  
  
“Why?”  
  
Harry blinked at Hermione, and glanced at Ron. Ron’s silent, watching demeanor told Harry that Hermione spoke for him, too. Harry turned back to Hermione with a slight frown. “Why? Because I’ve discussed things with the Malfoys and this finally feels like home, of course.”  
  
“I did hear Malfoy talking to you before we came upstairs,” said Hermione. “He said that he thinks the plan will work, and he was going to talk to his father about it. What plan?”  
  
Harry knew he didn’t have to have secrets from his friends, but still, he hesitated. Maybe because he knew that they still distrusted Draco a bit, maybe because they had supported his plan to go to the Muggle world when they saw how determined he was on it, and this would feel like changing his mind.  
  
But in the end, he told the truth. “Our plan to take revenge on the goblins.”  
  
Ron whistled, long and low. “Are you sure you should be doing that, mate? It’s what got you in all the trouble in the first place, after all.”  
  
Harry had to roll his eyes at that. “It was  _not_. Yes, I’ll grant you that the goblins got angry about something I did, but that wasn’t vengeance on my part. They could have solved it a lot of ways, and instead they decided to do something so despicable and pathetic that—”  
  
He clenched his teeth. He was shaking. That mildly surprised him, but he supposed it was easier to feel calm when Draco was around.  
  
“You don’t have to tell us if you’d rather not,” said Ron, who was watching him closely now.  
  
“No, you asked and you have a right to know,” Harry said, shaking his head. “Especially if I call on you for help, or you manage to think of something I didn’t and I want you to keep me out of trouble.” He smiled at Ron.  
  
“What kind of revenge?” Hermione was the one who asked the question that probably mattered most, the way she usually was.  
  
Harry cocked his head at her. “One that threatens what they love most.”  
  
He wanted to draw it out a little, tease them, but Hermione was too quick for that. “Their  _money_?” she asked, and then lowered her voice to a hiss, as though goblin spies might be hiding around the corner. “How are you going to threaten that—take that? I agree with Ron that it would be too dangerous, and you shouldn’t try.”  
  
“It’s not theft,” Harry said. “Not exactly. What Draco thinks I should do is tame my magic and learn to wield it so that I can destroy stone and metal as well as things like cloth and blood and bone. Then I can threaten their money.”  
  
“Not unless you sneak into the bank,” Ron said, lifting his head as if he scented something on the wind. “And, sorry, mate, I refuse to do  _that_ again.”  
  
Harry smiled. Draco’s help or not, it was comforting to remember that his friends would always stand by him. “No. There are rituals that would let me do it from a distance.” He laid his hand on the pile of books in front of him. “But I have to get through these to make sure that I know how to control the magic in the first place, and that’s going to be a job and a half.”  
  
“Do you want some help?” Of course Hermione was already in motion, reaching for the pile of books as though she didn’t care that they came from a Malfoy library and might contain things that she’d rather not read.  
  
And she probably didn’t, Harry thought. That was another nice thing about his friends. “That would be great. I know that these books have something to do with taming wild magic, but they don’t all cover the same kind. And I don’t know how I’m going to locate my kind among all those  _pages_.” He rifled through the top book on the pile. It was at least thick enough for the papers to make a licking, hungry sound as they traveled by.  
  
Hermione arranged the books on the bed and held up her wand. “This spell should do the trick.  _Comperio_ organic magic!”  
  
Half the books glowed red, and the other half jumped off the bed and rolled about on the floor. Harry jumped himself, at the noise, while Ron only looked resigned. “She does this all the time at home,” he told Harry, with a small roll of his eyes.  
  
Harry glanced at the books, wondering if Hermione’s spell had separated them into two piles based on which contained information and which didn’t, but then realized that it was searching them in two different ways, instead. The ones on the bed flipped rapidly through their pages, and then settled either on an open one or with their covers shut, which presumably indicated they didn’t have anything to offer him. The ones on the floor piled on top of each other, with a gleaming, gold-threaded bookmark sticking out of the tomes at a certain point. Hermione gestured with her wand to the one on the top, the thick one Harry had already flipped through. “These are ordered by relevance. It looks like you had the answer at your fingertips already, and you didn’t know it.”  
  
Harry plucked the book from the pile. Relevance or not, the pile was a little shaky, as if it could tip over at any second. Relevance didn’t take things like relative size into account. “Thank you.”  
  
“You’re welcome,” said Hermione, and settled back with a smile that she turned on several different places in the room, as though the hidden audience this time were people waiting for her and watching, ready to applaud.  
  
*  
  
“What nonsense is this that I hear you encouraging Potter with, Draco?”  
  
Draco stared blankly at his father for a second. He’d been so busy reading about the kind of rituals that the Dark Lord had conducted, the ones that would let someone practice magic from a distance, that he had lost track of time and his surroundings. It was as if his father had appeared out of nowhere.  
  
“Mother told you, I suppose,” he said at last, and settled his book beside him. He hadn’t talked to Narcissa in detail about his plan, but he’d hardly been able to avoid saying something when he brought a book with him to the lunch table.  
  
“She told me the broad outlines. I worked out the details by noting which books were missing from the library.” Lucius took a measured step towards Draco, across the threshold of Draco’s bedroom. He almost never did that. He said that his son’s chambers were private and should remain that way. “Are you mad?”  
  
“There’s no good solution to this,” said Draco, with a calm that came to him as a gift. He certainly wasn’t able to reach for it and command it ordinarily, but when he really needed it, there it was. “The goblins would hate us if they found out the charade, but once the year ends, there’s nothing to keep them from taking Harry back into slavery if he stays in the wizarding world and they change their minds.”  
  
“Goblins keep their word.” Lucius’s fingers had tightened on his wand. “They must, or there would be no trusting them.”  
  
Draco had to snort when he thought about the endless newspaper articles that had appeared once the goblins suggested taking Harry into slavery. They had discussed it in tones of fascination and scandal and surprise and sorrow, but no one had ever expressed outrage. “They proposed taking one of the most powerful and beloved heroes of the war—well, he  _should_ have been beloved—as a slave, and no one really tried to stop them. I think you’re wrong about the power relationship there, Father, and what direction it flows.”  
  
There was a long hesitation. Then Lucius stepped fully inside and shut the door, leaning with a resigned expression against the wall beside it. Draco waited. This was different from anything his father had ever done before.  
  
“I want you to think about what you’re doing,” Lucius whispered. “Disappearing into the middle of a long fight. Do you know  _how_ long? Do you have the slightest idea? Do you know what might happen even if the goblins don’t find out about the charade?”  
  
“Actually, I don’t. Why don’t you tell me?”  
  
Draco knew Lucius was going to anyway, and at least this way, it would seem like it was at Draco’s invitation instead of something forced on him. From the pause and slight narrowing of his eyes, Lucius knew that, too. But he proceeded.  
  
“They could take away our vaults. They could decide that since Potter hasn’t technically served his year, they’re going to take him away and  _make_ him finish it, and you could go with him, since you’re the one who helped him to avoid the punishment.”  
  
“ _I’m_ the one?” Draco hadn’t meant to interrupt, he’d meant to let Lucius have his narrow-brained say, but he couldn’t help it. “I’m not the one who sacrificed a Malfoy family vault to save Harry Potter.”  
  
His father opened his mouth as if he would respond, and then shut it tight again. Draco nodded. “We’re all in this together,” he said, as gently as he could, because he knew how much his father would hate the reminder. “We intervened to rescue Harry, and that means that we have to bear the costs of such an action.”  
  
“I did not know the costs would be  _this_.”  
  
“But, Father,” Draco said, and lowered his voice a little, “weren’t you the one who taught me to think carefully about all the costs of an action before I committed myself to it, because later I wouldn’t be able to back out?”  
  
Lucius abruptly turned his back. Draco thought he would march straight out of Draco’s rooms again, but instead, he apparently needed to commune with the wall. After a few long seconds of breathing, when Draco, too, held his breath, his father turned around and looked Draco in the eye.  
  
“I think that you are getting carried away by the admittedly powerful notion of saving someone you owe a life-debt to,” said Lucius. “Why not pause and think about whether Potter needs this, or if you are only doing something that appeals to you and not something that will benefit him?”  
  
“He’s been moping around the house,” said Draco. “There’s really no question in my mind that he needs this.”  
  
His father gave him a smile that was more like a grimace. “There is in mine.”  
  
“I know.” Draco looked down with a fluttering of his eyelashes that he thought he saw his father scowl at from the corner of his eye. “But there’s no way to be safe, Father, not if he stays in the wizarding world. Someone could come and question him and harass him. We  _have_ to terrify people. We have to show them that Harry will use his magic against them if they bother him.”  
  
“That part might be no problem. But wizards are one thing, and goblins are another.”  
  
Draco blinked, and something he had never known came to him like a gift. “You’re scared of them, aren’t you?” he whispered.  
  
“Scared of  _what_?” His father was holding himself so stiffly that Draco thought he could push him over and he’d shatter.  
  
“You’re scared of the goblins,” Draco clarified. He felt a little dazed and yet impressed at the same time. His father had worked against his fear in order to free someone that he felt he owed a life-debt to. It  _was_ impressive. “You think that angering them can have worse consequences even than angering Harry when he’s not in control of his life-destroying magic.”  
  
“Given that Potter hasn’t brought down my house around my ears yet, I would say that I am not wrong to be calm around him.”  
  
“But neither have the goblins.” Draco leaned forwards persuasively. “We interfered once already. We’ve fooled them so far. Why not keep doing it? Harry doesn’t ever have to use his magic during this year, you know. But when the year’s up and we have to let him go outside the house, then there might still be people—or goblins—who are insistent on bothering him. The threat is the best defense.”  
  
Lucius was still, pale, thoughtful, for a moment. Then he said, “What happens if the goblins decide to take revenge on the Malfoy vaults because they know that Malfoys helped Potter?”  
  
“They’re going to look indescribably petty,” said Draco, with an unconcerned little shrug. It didn’t bother him as much as his father evidently thought it should, and Draco knew he should clarify why. “Besides, I’ll already have removed all the Malfoy money from the bank, just in case they think of trying anything.”  
  
Lucius leaned back against the wall with a little grunt of surprise, his eyes on Draco. Draco smiled at him. “Did you think I hadn’t thought of that?” The emotion that filled him this time was an absurd tenderness, for his father as much as anything else. “Of course I don’t want to be poor. I’ll take the money out from the Malfoy vaults before Harry starts threatening the goblins.”  
  
“You mean that  _I_ will take it out,” Lucius corrected him.  
  
“I thought you didn’t want to have any part in our plan,” Draco said, and he knew he was baiting him, but honestly, he couldn’t help it. “That means I would have to play the part of the head of the family, and protect our wealth.”  
  
Lucius gave him a cool enough look that Draco lifted a hand in front of him in instinctive defense. “I am still the head of the family. And the more I think of it, the more I believe that you are likely right. The goblins are not like wizards. They do not think the payment of a life-debt sufficient to end their engagement with that debt. They would believe that we took responsibility of some kind for Potter, and they would feel free to extend their enmity against him against us, as well.”  
  
“Yes, sir,” said Draco, and bowed his head. As long as his father would do what he could to protect Harry and help them with their plan, then Draco was satisfied. He didn’t need to be the one to take out the money from the vaults, as long as it was done.  
  
“Good,” said Lucius, and stood frowning at Draco a bit longer, as if he would have said something else. Draco held his breath. Then his father abruptly stepped up to him, and tapped his cane on the floor in that way that said Draco had to pay attention. Draco looked up.  
  
“I may not understand your intimacy with Potter,” Lucius told him. “I may not like it. I may think that it is strange and not worth paying the amount of time and attention for it that you have.”  
  
Draco maintained his calm expression, but his hand did clench, down at his side. Lucius could have no idea what it meant to Draco.  _He_ hadn’t been the one that Harry turned to and held and kissed.  
  
“But I do know that what one values is worth fighting for.” Lucius drew back far enough that he could survey Draco with a meditative eye. “That you are willing to fight for this, to risk our money, to take on the cause of someone who was a virtual stranger…that pleases me.”  
  
“In spite of the virtual stranger part?” Draco asked, fascinated. His parents had so often told him only to take risks like this for family.  
  
“In spite of it. Because it signals your commitment all the more strongly.” For a second, Lucius reached out and rested his hand on Draco’s shoulder.  
  
Draco bowed his head. Lucius turned and paced slowly out of his rooms, and Draco sat there in silence for a time before he could go back to reading his books on those rituals of distance magic.  
  
*  
  
“I think I have something to show you.”  
  
Draco looked up in surprise. He and Harry had retreated to Draco’s bedroom with one accord after dinner, when Harry’s friends had ended their visit and Draco’s parents had retreated in another direction. Draco couldn’t stop looking at the way Harry moved through his rooms, the way the colors of his hair and eyes stood out, as though he was cutting the air around him into specific shapes.  
  
“You  _think_?” Draco put the book he was trying to read aside. “This ought to be good.”  
  
“Shut up,” said Harry mildly, but hesitated one more time. When Draco was about to shove him in impatience, Harry finally took a deep breath and reached into one of his pockets. He came out with a jagged rock, an ordinary one, one that he had probably picked up in the gardens. Draco frowned at it nonetheless. The house-elves shouldn’t be letting such common rocks lie around the gardens.  
  
“Will you stop scowling at me like that?” Harry muttered. “I’m already nervous enough.”  
  
Draco suspected it would be useless to try to explain both what he was actually scowling at and the standards that made him do it. He leaned back on his bed and flapped a hand instead. “Go on. Show me.”  
  
Harry frowned at the stone himself, which Draco was going to remember and tell him about later, and then he abruptly closed his hand around it. Draco blinked.  _I thought he was going to do something magical, not use his strength on it._  
  
But Harry gave a deep groan, and there was a vibration that seemed to pass through the bed on which Draco sat and the walls and the floor but not through the air, and then Harry gave a deep sigh and opened his hand. Dust trickled out, dust that Draco knew no spell could have created without a wand. He let himself gape.  
  
“It’s different,” said Harry, and sank onto the floor behind him, his head hanging as he panted. “How I destroy non-organic things versus organic things, I mean. Hermione was the one who suggested that maybe I couldn’t turn metal or stone into sludge and ashes, and after that, it was easy.”  
  
As jealous as Draco felt that one of Harry’s friends had been the one to suggest the solution, he could at least smile. “That’s amazing.”  
  
He thought it was simple praise. But it made Harry’s head come flying up, and his eyes lock on Draco as if he’d said something startling. Then Draco thought he had something on his face. He raised a hand and touched the corner of his jaw instinctively.  
  
Still staring, Harry stood up and made his way forwards. Draco looked up at him and made a small noise. He didn’t think he’d really meant to make it.  
  
Harry pulled him slowly to his feet. Draco stood there with him, nose to nose, and Harry whispered, “You looked as though you meant it. That it was really amazing.”  
  
“Of course it was,” said Draco, and feeling he needed to do something to regain control of the situation—not that he really understood what the situation  _was_ —he reached out and put a comforting hand on Harry’s shoulder. “I understand what a struggle it probably was to master that magic. I was applauding your commitment and the result.”  
  
Harry only smiled as if he understood something that Draco didn’t, and then reached out and cupped his jaw and brought him in for a kiss. Draco submitted to it without a murmur. He let his tongue stretch out and explore Harry’s mouth, this time, and Harry pulled back from him with a shake of his head and a gasp.  
  
“That was wonderful,” he whispered.  
  
 _I’ll make it more wonderful yet,_ Draco thought, and leaned against Harry in silent contentment.


	18. A Debate and a Test

“What is it?” Harry thought his voice was perfectly neutral and nice, but it couldn’t have been, not when Draco immediately folded over the top of the paper and put it down next to his plate. He was trying to smile at Harry, but it didn’t even reach his cheeks, let alone his eyes.  
  
“What? What do you mean?” Draco dipped a hand into his pocket as if he was gripping his wand, but a second later, pulled it out without doing any magic as far as Harry could tell. He pushed a plate in the middle of the table helpfully towards Harry. It contained what looked like fat little tarts quivering with chunks of pear. Harry scooped one up and took a thoughtful bite, not removing his eyes from Draco. Draco cleared his throat uncomfortably and swiped at his face. “A disturbing story.”  
  
Harry was distracted for a second by the tart, which burst in his mouth when he’d thought it wouldn’t, and the sweetness was there as well as the juice running inconveniently down his chin. He gasped, swallowed, seized a napkin, and wiped his chin. Draco had the good grace to look away, but Harry saw him bite his lip.  
  
“What disturbing story?” Harry finally got the juice under control and put the napkin down beside him with more force than necessary. “If they’re spouting shit about me again and how I’m your sex slave—”  
  
“It’s worse than that,” Draco said, softly now, and slowly unfolded the paper again. “I think our grace period is almost over.”  
  
Harry took a careful seat, his gut churning. It had been a fortnight since he’d first practiced the magic that turned a stone into dust successfully. He and Draco had been training each day, dueling, but also using Harry’s magic to destroy anything disposable and inorganic they could find. Lucius and Narcissa had drawn the line at them turning walls to dust, though.  
  
There had been kisses and times when they sat silently in each other’s company and times when Draco went elsewhere while Harry visited his friends, and Harry had been happy.  
  
Maybe that time was over, and if so, Harry would mourn it. “Why don’t you hand me the paper so I can read it? You know my eyes aren’t good at this distance.”  
  
Draco didn’t even smile at the witticism—well,  _Harry_ had thought it was witty—which worried Harry more than all the rest of it. He took a deep breath and looked down at the headline.  
  
 _HARRY POTTER PAYING THE ULTIMATE PRICE?_  
  
The photographs were one of him from the Tri-Wizard Tournament, mostly looking wet, and one of him while he stood in front of Gringotts, the day before he was officially enslaved, mostly looking murderous. Harry didn’t know what point they were supposed to prove until he read the next bit of the article.  
  
 _Has the wizarding world abandoned Harry Potter, the Chosen One, the Hope of Us All?_  
  
Harry groaned. Draco managed a small grin. “The Hope of Us All part? I rather liked that myself. It’s a new variation.”  
  
“One that they’ll now use endlessly, the way they used to do with Boy-Who-Lived,” Harry muttered, and read on.  
  
 _The wizarding world has. How could we let someone who saved us all be enslaved by the Malfoys, his ancient enemies? He even had a rivalry with Draco Malfoy in school. That he went so tamely to his enslavement says much about how Harry Potter has lost his spirit._  
  
Harry put his hand over his eyes. When Draco had said their grace period was over, Harry had envisioned people who suspected that he was fooling the goblins and were angrily demanding an accounting. Maybe even the goblins themselves. It made sense, of course, that they would probably have more angry reporters besieging Malfoy Manor instead.  
  
“Of course they took offense at your enslavement of me and not the goblins’,” he finally muttered, and put the paper down.  
  
“Of course they did,” Draco echoed him. “It would be too much to ask, that level of self-awareness.” He clasped his hands together and gave a faint smile as Harry unwillingly snorted. “Now, the only question that remains is what we’re going to do about it?”  
  
Harry hesitated for a long second. He didn’t want either the goblins or the reporters coming into Malfoy Manor again. But the goblins would be harder to face. On the other hand, the reporters were capable of being annoying, and would probably publish articles about how the Malfoys were hiding him away if they didn’t get access.  
  
“Harry. Your  _eggs_.”  
  
Harry started and turned his head. His eggs were small puddles of sludge and floating grey on his plate. The plate itself hadn’t been affected, but what was organic in his food…  
  
He was angrier than he’d thought.  
  
He took a deep breath, and then murmured, “You know, I’m not sure how many people know that I really have this magic.” He used his fork to poke at the eggs. “I’m sure that no one outside this house except Ron and Hermione knows that I’m training my magic to destroy metal and stone and things like that, either.”  
  
Draco frowned. “What are you saying?”  
  
“That there might be other ways to frighten them off.” Harry gave him a sharp grin and picked up another egg, concentrating for a moment. This time, the shell withered and cracked in sharp patterns, and something like black fungus peered through the cracks before turning into particles smaller than dust, feathering away from his fingers and onto the plate. “Though we’d have to integrate them with the pretense that I’m completely under your thumb and your obedient sex slave, of course.”  
  
“Of course.” Draco’s voice was a little thick.  
  
Harry glanced at him. Draco’s eyes were wide, his cheeks flushed. Harry frowned. He had seen Draco look like that when they were making some clever plan against the goblins, but Harry didn’t know what he had to be so excited about this time. It wasn’t like Harry’s plan was all that clever, if you thought about it.  
  
Then Draco leaned forwards, with one elbow on the table, to look at him, and stared. And Harry remembered the other times that he’d seen Draco look like that. Usually right after they kissed.  
  
Harry swallowed through a throat that was so dry he might have swallowed some of his own created dust, and put the mess of the egg down. “You—you’re not frightened by that?” he asked, and jerked his head at the plate.  
  
“No,” Draco breathed. “I—I knew what you could do, but I hadn’t  _seen_ it. Not like that, under your deliberate control.”  
  
Harry wanted to ask another question, the next, obvious one about what Draco was feeling if it wasn’t fear, but his own face was flaming. He took refuge in picking at the mess with his fork. “But it’s dangerous. I could hurt you if it got out of control. It usually happens to whatever I’m touching at the time. And you saw the way that I didn’t even hurt the fork. Living things are still more vulnerable to me even when I’m trying really hard to hold onto my temper.”  _Living things like people._  
  
“I don’t care.”  
  
Draco got up and came around the table towards him. Harry stood up, hesitantly. Even after two months where some portion of almost every day had been spent in Draco’s company, he didn’t think he knew what would happen when Draco reached him.  
  
What happened was Draco grasping Harry’s chin and kissing him soundly, and then catching one of the deadly hands that Harry kept trying to tuck behind his back and clasping it firmly. Harry allowed it, more surprised than anything. Then Draco drew back and gave him a look that had embers in the bottom of it.  
  
“I know you could hurt me,” Draco whispered. “But that’s true of your dueling spells, too, and you haven’t. I want—I want everything about you.” He tugged on Harry’s shirt as if he was contemplating rending it down to the bottom. “Sometimes I think you feel the same way about me, and sometimes I don’t know. Why don’t you show me, and I’ll tell you what your gestures say to me?” His fingers crept into the collar of Harry’s shirt.  
  
“You trust me with this magic?” Harry placed a hesitant hand on the back of Draco’s shoulder, and a second later, worked his fingers under Draco’s shirt in turn. He didn’t need to touch bare skin, because his magic would affect cloth just as badly, but he had to be sure.  
  
Draco hissed and let his head droop back. “ _Yes_ ,” he whispered. “Oh, Harry, you have no idea how that feels.”  
  
“I think I can make a guess, based on your face,” Harry said, and smiled a little, awkwardly. He had no idea what he was doing, but it was better to have an idea what you were doing some of the time and go with it the rest, maybe.  
  
He pulled Draco against him. For a second, their chests touched, the heat in them burning through the cloth. Harry looked down to make sure nothing was really disintegrating, and Draco surprised him with another sharp kiss.  
  
This time, Harry let himself stop worrying and kiss back. It felt wonderful, at least as wonderful as when he had stopped worrying about what the Malfoys would think of him and just chosen the rooms he wanted.  
  
Draco was gasping into his mouth in the same eager way, and pushing him backwards. Harry nearly tripped, and he thought for a second about house-elves or Draco’s parents coming around the corner or how someone could see them and accuse them of—  
  
What? Seducing each other?  
  
But Draco settled all of Harry’s silent concern that they really needed to go up to their rooms by shoving him again, and kissing him at the same time. Harry gave in and grabbed Draco, turning him around so that he was the one against the wall. Then he lifted his hands clear of Draco’s skin and touched the cloth of his shirt and concentrated, the way he had when he’d touched the last egg.  
  
Draco’s shirt dissolved, wisping away. Harry blinked and licked his lips. “Wow,” he said. He’d thought it would turn into ashes, too, but apparently different things happened to cloth than to food.  
  
Or even paper. He actually hadn’t used his deadly magic all that much, when he thought about it.  
  
Draco ruthlessly yanked on Harry’s hair, and said, “I’m going to do the same thing with a spell, if you don’t get yours off soon.”  
  
Harry touched his own shirt and concentrated in the same way, and the magic seemed to blast through his fingers, taking them for its natural channels, making them into something deep and complicated, deeper than just flesh and bone. In a few seconds, his shirt was gone, and Draco pulled on him again, and they were together.  
  
Harry had thought of pulling off their trousers, but when Draco groaned and shifted against him and their groins accidentally brushed, it was obvious there was going to be no  _time_ —no time for a lot of things. Harry huffed and grabbed Draco around the shoulders and wrestled Draco into him, and they began rutting together.  
  
Or went on? Harry had never done something like this before. He had no idea where things had begun and ended. He had no idea how long they were going to be like this, straining against each other, with Draco’s panting breath on Harry’s face and Harry’s panting breath somewhere around Draco’s ear.  
  
But he was rapidly learning what it was like, sweat slicking his fingers and staining over his spine and his back quivering with exhaustion. He was getting to know the tickle of Draco’s hair against his ears, and the rapid huffs of surprise made by each wet exhalation and the glide of hands over his chest. Then that became the glide of hands over his shoulders. And it was surprising, and new, and when Draco wanted to kiss him with an impatient little grunt Harry went with it, and—  
  
The heat was suddenly  _everywhere,_ to the point where Harry opened his eyes honestly surprised that Draco’s hair hadn’t caught on fire. The bumping of their hipbones and the rubbing of their erections—and that was the first time Harry had been so aware of his cock, so aware and heavy and oh Merlin it would be embarrassing if someone caught them now—and the heat of sex and possible humiliation and desire swirled all together and Harry came with a grunt, closing his mouth over Draco’s so that he could muffle it.  
  
Draco had had the same idea, from the frantic twist of his neck, but he didn’t manage to do it at the same time, so Harry’s teeth caught Draco’s tongue and Draco’s lips clasped air. He was coming, then, too, and his hands were trembling on Harry’s shoulders, and his breath was too sharp and fast and everything was  _so_.  
  
They crashed together in that they slid down the wall and tumbled slowly to a heap on the floor. Draco was murmuring with sleepy confusion into Harry’s cheek. Harry, on the other hand, felt as if he could give it another go, if his cock would stop being inconveniently soft and his muscles would stop their inconvenient trembling.  
  
“Draco?” he whispered, and swept one hand over his cheekbone.  
  
Draco finally opened his eyes, seeming to accept that neither the floor nor Harry was a bed. “What?”  
  
“That was wonderful.”  
  
Harry flushed a second later, because his declaration sounded more than a little pompous and stupid, but from the way that Draco’s eyes widened and flashed, it was more than appreciated. Draco drew himself up onto an elbow and gave Harry a gentle once-over, as if he was looking into his heart and seeing all the appreciation there along with everything else. “Good. I’m glad you think so.”  
  
“I do,” said Harry, and reached for his wand again, this time to cast the necessary Cleaning Charms and the ones that would tell them if anyone had tried to come in and seen them. No, there was nothing. Either house-elf magic was undetectable given the spells Harry was using, or the elves had heard the noises and wisely decided that it was none of their business. “Now, let’s go up to your rooms and sleep.”  
  
“My rooms? Why not yours?” Draco turned his head to the side, as if to say that he would be just as glad to use the floor as a bed after all.  
  
“Because yours have the most comfortable bed.” Harry slung his arm over Draco’s shoulders and pulled at them until Draco opened his eyes. “And later, maybe we can do this again, and that’s more likely in a comfortable spot, don’t you agree?”  
  
Draco smiled, eyes shining. He nodded, and they stood up and staggered towards the stairs together.  
  
*  
  
Draco woke slowly much later that morning, looking up at the canopy of the bed and feeling wonderful, the way that Harry had said.  
  
He turned his head and saw Harry asleep beside him, his face exactly as calm as though they slept like this every day. Draco reached out and thoughtfully took Harry’s hand, entwining their fingers until it would take a nundu to pry them apart.  
  
 _No. I won’t let that happen. If he still doesn’t want to stay in the wizarding world, I’ll just have to convince him that it’s a good idea to do it._  
  
Harry rolled towards him and sighed, and Draco braced himself for the moment he would open his eyes and say something wrong. But what Harry actually said when he opened his eyes was, “So I think I do have a good plan for teaching them to fear my magic and still think that I’m your totally obedient slave at the same time.”  
  
Draco leaned forwards and tangled his fingers in Harry’s hair, sliding them back and forth purely so that he could enjoy the texture. “And that involves us appearing together before a reporter one more time?”  
  
Harry sighed. “Yes. Although hopefully it’ll be the last time for our year.”  
  
Draco hesitated, then decided that he wouldn’t say anything about Harry’s plan to leave the wizarding world right now. They could discuss that later, when some of the languor had gone out of Draco’s bones and his head had cleared.  
  
“So tell me your great plan,” he said, and settled back, pleased, for the moment, just to be here and to have Harry explaining things to him. 


	19. The Monster Unchained

“I don’t know if this is a good plan.” Hermione was sitting on Harry’s bed this time—Ron was in an intensive Auror training program at the moment and couldn’t come to the Manor—and looked at him doubtfully. “I mean, I know why you think it is, but you’re going to have to be really fearsome to pull it off.”  
  
“The same is true about threatening the goblins.” Harry shook his head and watched as his hands settled on the bed in front of him. He was ruffling the covers, pinching them. He made himself be still. Yes, he was nervous and upset about having to do this at all, but he wasn’t going to step back from it, and he didn’t want Hermione to think her warnings were making that much difference to him. “We have to do it right, or we might as well not do it at all. But you didn’t think that was a bad plan.”  
  
“I think that you can do it if you have those rituals that you talked about,” Hermione said. “The ones that let you practice magic from a distance. But you have to do this  _right in front_ of people.”  
  
Harry cocked his head at her. “Why, Hermione,” he said. “One might think that you’re all right with threatening goblins but not other human beings.”  
  
Hermione flushed so hotly that Harry was surprised she didn’t set the bed on fire. “That’s not true at all,” she said, voice low and passionate. “It’s just—just  _wrong,_ Harry, to do this. You shouldn’t have to.”  
  
“I know that,” said Harry. “But I’m going to threaten and frighten them. I won’t actually hurt anyone.”  
  
“I didn’t have as much of a problem with the goblins because they did actually try to enslave you,” said Hermione, not really responding to what he was saying. “But these people haven’t done anything wrong.”  
  
Some of the sheets abruptly withered beneath Harry. Hermione gasped and drew her hand back. Harry curled himself up and watched her with sharp eyes.  
  
“It was precisely  _not doing anything_ that I had a problem with,” he said, and his voice was quiet, so quiet. “They stood by when the goblins agreed to enslave me. They went along with the threat without a protest, without a murmur.”  
  
“Luna tried,” said Hermione.  
  
“I know she did,” Harry said. Luna’s articles in the  _Quibbler_ offering evidence of past goblin slavery and how the goblins were probably doing this even more as revenge for that ancient insult than as revenge for Harry’s more recent one had been well-intentioned. But not enough people read the  _Quibbler,_ and too many people read the  _Daily Prophet._ “But she’s not one of the arseholes who wants to interview me and who’s pretending that the Malfoys are the source of the whole problem, either.”  
  
Hermione half-sighed. “I don’t think that you’re going to win fans. This might make it even more uncomfortable for you to exist in the wizarding world, later.”  
  
“I still haven’t absolutely decided that I’m going to do that,” Harry said pointedly. “I want to keep my options open.”  
  
“Even with the way that I saw you look at Malfoy before he agreed to leave us alone?”  
  
Harry blinked. Then he blinked again. Then he said, “You know without us telling you, don’t you?”  
  
Hermione was concentrating on the carpet in front of her, and her face was bright red. She shrugged a little. “I thought you would probably arrive at this point soon enough,” she said vaguely. She shot him another glance. “That doesn’t mean that it’s not surprising, because it  _is_.”  
  
“Yeah,” Harry said. Surprising was one word for it. But it was wonderful, too, to feel Draco’s casual hand on his shoulder, and to know that Draco was doing it because he wanted to, and see the way Draco leaned towards him when Harry was speaking as though his words were the most important things in the world.  
  
“That’s something else to consider,” Hermione continued, soft and distant. “If you want to live openly after this with M-Malfoy as your lover, you shouldn’t encourage people to believe the worst of him.”  
  
“They’re going to believe it anyway,” Harry said. “If we don’t make some kind of answer to this, then they’ll accuse us of hiding and holding back, and say that we’re afraid to show the absolute truth. And we have to base some of our strategy on the stories we’ve already told them, the ones about me being an utterly submissive slave. We want them to believe us, not doubt us.”  
  
Hermione reached across the bed and held his hand. Her eyes were bright with tears. “I know,” she whispered. “I suppose I needed to hear you say that  _you_ knew, too, but I realize how hard it is, Harry. And it really isn’t your fault. It’s their fault. But I wish you didn’t have to.”  
  
Harry grabbed her in a rough hug. In the end, all her objections and little niggles were because she cared about him. He’d remember that.  
  
And if this thing between him and Draco blew up, the way he thought it might sometimes, at least he would know that his friends would be there with him, and there was someone he could always count on. After the weeks of feeling like he could really rely on no one except himself, that was exceptionally comforting.  
  
*  
  
“Ready?” Harry shifted and shook his head as though the weight of the chain and collar around his neck were itchy.  
  
“Ready.” Draco wound the chain around his knuckles and gave Harry a measuring look. For this stunt, Harry had insisted that the chain be real, although the spikes that shimmered on the collar were purest illusion. Draco didn’t like it, even so. The black links of the chain weren’t actually all that heavy, but heavier than anything he could imagine actually holding Harry with.  
  
“Yes,” said Harry, as though he was answering Draco’s thoughts instead of the question that Draco had thought was actually hovering between them, and then he nodded at Draco and gave a brave little smile and walked out of the gates of Malfoy Manor.  
  
The reporters who had been standing outside them opened their mouths at the sight of them. Then they closed their mouths. Draco knew why. Even from here, they could make out the chain and hear it clinking, and most of them could probably see the crazed expression on Harry’s face.  
  
“Now,” Draco said to them, astonished that his own voice could sound like that, gentle and soft and mocking and cruel, “don’t everyone step forwards at once to get their pictures taken and ask their questions.”  
  
There was a long silence until a woman edged towards them. She was older, maybe one of the former Ministry employees who had taken to journalism after the war. She nodded to Draco, but focused on Harry as she asked her questions. “Can he hear us?”  
  
“What do you think?” Draco asked, and thumbed through the links of the chain, smiling thinly at her. “He’s chained, not deaf.”  
  
“Oh.” The reporter made a nervous little gesture down the front of her robes, and then stood up straight. “So. Mr. Potter. How does it feel to know that you’ve been unjustly taken into slavery?”  
  
“We do not speak of justice here,” Draco said, and tugged on the chain a little. Following their prearranged signal, Harry dropped to his knees in front of Draco, his head hanging and swaying back and forth. “We speak of power.”  
  
“I would still ask the question,” said the woman, with a stubborn look in her brown eyes that marked her as the bravest of the reporters he would see here today, Draco thought. Then again, Harry hadn’t yet demonstrated his magic. Maybe they didn’t know there was anything to be scared of. “Can you hear me, Mr. Potter?”  
  
Harry looked up at her and opened his mouth.  
  
The sound that came out was a chilling mixture of howl, gabble, and cackle. Draco had to keep himself from jumping, and he’d been there when Harry had practiced it. The witch fell back a step with her hand on her bosom and her eyes so stunned that Draco had to fight to keep from snickering.  
  
“What is  _wrong_ with him?” the reporter asked, lifting her quill in front of her like it was a shield, and there was no question that she was talking to Draco now.  
  
“He’s had to be taken into slavery because his mind was already descending into madness at the time we agreed to take him over from Gringotts,” Draco responded, and crouched, letting one hand run over Harry’s shoulder for a moment. He only regretted that they had to do it like this, that he couldn’t touch Harry in the privacy of their bedroom and have it count. “If you knew what he was like when he first came here, you wouldn’t ask stupid questions.”  
  
Harry looked up at him and gurgled wordlessly. Draco converted the shoulder rub into a soothing pat on the head. “He can’t speak anymore,” he added.  
  
“But I was here!” Appleby, the annoying reporter who had written the first story about them, pushed her way to the front. “You didn’t say anything about it then!”  
  
“Well.” Draco half-shrugged. “It wasn’t that far advanced then, and I still cared a little about protecting Harry’s privacy.” The women exchanged a look when Draco said Harry’s first name. Well, whatever conclusions they drew from that were probably going to be wrong, anyway. “Now, he’s not going to regain his sanity for at least a year. At  _least_ ,” he added, when the two women looked shocked. “We’re giving him a home and treating him as well as we can, but there’s a powerful curse on him. We had no idea it was there. I certainly wouldn’t have taken him into my bed if it was.” He frowned a little down at Harry.  
  
“What’s the curse?” The two women both asked at the same time, and then frowned at each other. Draco smiled gravely, wondering if there was any way he could make their rivalry work for him.  
  
“That his magic goes wild,” Draco said. “He can destroy anything living he touches. Observe.” He bent down and plucked a clump of grass from the ground and held it out to Harry. Harry gave his impression of a drooling, wide-eyed, mindless stare in response.  
  
“You know you’ve seen this before,” Draco murmured, easily able to ignore his audience now. This wasn’t so different from planning with Harry. They had already plotted out every movement of this little drama. “You know what you can do with it, what I want you to do with it.”  
  
Harry blinked and opened his mouth further, wider, until Draco could see almost all the way down his throat. Draco tapped him on the nose. “Not  _bite_ it,” he said. “You know that’s not what I want you to do. Give me your hand.”  
  
It took a long time before Harry extended his hand, but Draco couldn’t be sure if that was part of the charade or just Harry struggling against his own disgust at the avidity on the women’s faces. Draco placed the grass carefully in Harry’s hand.  
  
“Now,” Draco said, “destroy it.”  
  
It seemed Harry had decided that he’d hesitated too long before, because this time his hand closed down right away. Draco felt the surge and tingle of magic, opening briefly around Harry’s body like a wildflower. And then he opened his hand and held it up, and nothing except bits of grey sludge dripped out. Draco could feel the tension in Harry’s body as he held still, rather than shaking the disgusting stuff from his hand right away, as he wanted to do.  
  
“You can put it down,” Draco said, trying as hard as he could to mimic the voice of a kind slavemaster—rare though those were—and Harry laid his hand down on the grass and wiped it clean.  
  
“That’s the curse?” When Draco looked up again, the two women stood a safe distance back. Draco restrained a savage smile. It would probably make things worse rather than better.  
  
“That his magic can do that? Oh, no.” Draco put a reassuring hand on Harry’s shoulder. Harry only watched the two women with parted jaws and hanging tongue. Draco bit his lip, hard, so that he wouldn’t laugh. “The curse is that he’s losing his sanity and his control over his magic. He can only be tamed by someone who’s not afraid of him.”  
  
They might have disputed that only a little while ago, he thought, but they looked from the way that Draco kept one hand on Harry’s head and didn’t move away even when Harry wrapped a hand around his ankle, and didn’t protest. The other reporters had shut up, the babble of questions that Draco hadn’t paid attention to dying away.  
  
“This is such a  _horrible_ thing,” whispered Appleby.  
  
“It is horrible,” said Draco. “And if you insist on taking him away from the Manor and letting him run about in wizarding society, this is the sort of thing that you’ll be spreading around.” He looked gravely from face to face. “Do you want to do that?”  
  
“Well, I mean, if he just destroys the grass,” said another reporter that Draco remembered gleefully covering his family’s fall from grace, “then we could make sure that he stays on the stone. Or something.” His voice trailed off at the end as Draco glared at him, and Draco was glad to finally have a weapon that would shut up idiots like that.  
  
 _You have to show me as a weapon that only you can control._ That had been Harry’s initial plan, both to show off his magic and to make it plain why he needed to stay with Draco’s family, and everything else had simply been a refinement of that plan.  
  
“He destroys anything living,” Draco said simply. “Or made from something living. Wood, cloth, paper, fur, skin, grass, flowers.” He paused and gave the reporter a narrow smile, remembering that he was particularly scared of some curses the Death Eaters had used. “Flesh.”  
  
The man squeaked and stumbled back, almost fanning himself. The two women made sounds not far from squeaks, too. Draco knelt down next to Harry and spoke soothingly into his ear. “Are you all right? Do you want to go back inside?”  
  
Harry’s hand tightened on his ankle. Draco knew what that meant. Harry could put up with this for a little while longer—just. They probably should end it as soon as they could and get back inside.  
  
“That can’t be true,” said the most annoying of the reporters, again. “ _You’re_ letting him touch you.”  
  
“Did you not read the articles?” Draco looked at Appleby and smiled nastily. “Someone who’s broken another person to his will, even a person this dangerous, doesn’t have any reason to fear.”  
  
“It is true that last time he seemed utterly submissive,” Appleby confirmed to the other reporters, nodding to Harry and looking around impressively, as if she thought someone was about to give her a reward for her poorly-written article. “And he let Malfoy put his hands all over him. I can’t see him doing that if he still had his sanity.”  
  
 _That’s not what you thought last time._ But the whole point of this was to both build on their previous charade and to show people why Harry’s magic was dangerous, so Draco did nothing but smile tolerantly and then bend down and ruffle Harry’s hair. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw several people backing away hastily.  
  
Draco didn’t sneer, but it was hard to avoid doing so. “I don’t know what else there is to say,” he said, and glanced over their shoulders to the people waiting beyond them. “Unless you still think that he should come out of our custody?”  
  
“ _Your_ custody,” said Appleby, a little insistently, her quill poised. “Or do you let your mother and father do the same things to him?”  
  
 _Yes, by all means, think that only one person is raping Harry, if that makes you feel better about leaving him where he is._ Draco inclined his head, saying nothing for a second until he could master his voice. “No. It was agreed that Harry should be my slave, because I was the one who had the rivalry with him in Hogwarts.”  
  
After that, it was really over, even with all the people lingering to ask questions. Draco answered them shortly. He could feel Harry’s trembling where he leaned against Draco’s leg.  
  
And he could feel the way that Harry’s magic was uncurling around him, slowly, the way that a snake would arise from a cold nap. But this was no snake, which could bite one person at a time and make them uncomfortable, or kill them. This was the kind of power that could kill them all if Harry let it loose.  
  
Draco stroked his shoulder one more time, and hoped that he had made it look like the kind of pat you would bestow on a dog to the people watching him. Then he herded the reporters away, still smiling, still dropping hints and threats. Harry moved after him, crawling.  
  
Someone screamed.  
  
Draco turned sharply around. If there were goblins on the grounds, then yes, Harry might lose control of his magic. It was about the only thing Draco could think of that would make him do that, though.  
  
They were all staring at the grass where Harry had been crouching. Draco looked down and realized it was blackened, withered, a bunch of separate seared strands that crumpled as he looked at them.  
  
“Yes,” Draco said, and smiled even more widely as he realized where their surprise came from. “He doesn’t need to use his hands to touch what he wants to destroy.” There were some blackened handprints on the ground as well, but that wasn’t what they were staring at. “He could use his knee or his back. The nape of his neck.” He looked up at Appleby. “His hair.”  
  
It had been a guess, following the direction of Appleby’s stare to the top of Harry’s head, but it was a good one. Appleby shrank back from him, her mouth fluttering open. Her hand sagged around her quill, and she glanced aside.  
  
“I wouldn’t have tried to touch him,” she whispered.  
  
Draco didn’t actually think she would have. But she would have asked him for permission to touch Harry, and that was simply unacceptable. He gave her another thick-toothed smile that she didn’t look at.  
  
“If you want me to release the chain, then I could do that,” he said.   
  
The terrified chorus that answered him convinced him they’d achieved their goal. All the people around them knew now that Harry had that kind of magic, and they didn’t want him free of those chains.  
  
As they entered the Manor again, Draco reached down and rattled the chain. Anyone watching would only see it as another typically cruel, Malfoy gesture, but Harry looked up, so Draco could show him the apology in his eyes.  
  
Harry bobbed his head a little, as though receiving a silent command. Draco sighed shakily. They had done what they wanted to do, come through it safely, but he would have preferred almost any other way of doing it.  
  
The door swung shut behind them, and Harry stretched his arms and legs like a cat before he climbed to his feet and touched Draco’s shoulder for a second. “Thank you,” he said. “I could see how difficult that was for you.”  
  
“For  _me_?” Draco had a lot of things that he wanted to say, and that he’d planned to say the moment they were alone. But he had to shake his head instead, and his mouth was dry and empty. He reached out and put one hand on Harry’s shoulder. “You were the one who had to crouch there and listen to them saying all those horrible things to you,” he whispered.  
  
“I know.” Harry’s eyes darkened in a way that Draco took to mean he’d hardly forget. “But you were the one who had to stand there and hold the chain and actually speak. Make them believe that you’re a different kind of monster. If it’s ever possible for me to get out of this character, I’ll have an easier time. I’m playing against what they expect of me. You’re playing into their expectations.”  
  
Draco shut his eyes. That was true, but he had thought of it and then tried to dismiss it. After all, it wasn’t like they could change their strategy now.  
  
“Thank you,” said Harry again, and leaned in near enough for a kiss that made Draco gasp and decide that Harry really, seriously meant it. His hand was around Harry’s neck in an instant, and his arse was against the wall, and Harry paid steady attention to his mouth.  
  
Harry drew back and looked him in the eye. “They tried to take everything from me. But I know this cost you, too. And I’m not going to forget that cost, and we are going to make them  _pay_.”  
  
Draco knew he was talking about the goblins, not the reporters. He nodded blindly, tears stinging his eyes and vanishing again when he thought about it. It wasn’t as though he was about to weep for sadness.  
  
If it was for anything, it was for gratitude. 


	20. Finding His Place

“You should see the stories about you, mate.” Ron’s voice was somber, and he started digging through the pockets of the Auror training robe he still wore as though he had a folded-up newspaper somewhere that he wanted Harry to read.  
  
“I’m staying away from them.”  
  
Ron paused in mid-dig and stared at him. Hermione, who was seated next to Ron on Harry’s bed, clasped her hands and looked at the floor to hide what Harry thought was a cross between a smile and a concerned frown. Ron didn’t notice. “What?” he demanded. “But how are you going to counteract the rumors when you don’t even know what they are?”  
  
“Because I don’t care what they are, and I don’t intend to counteract them.” Harry leaned back against the wall again, and let the waterfall soak his hair. He had to smile at the identical expressions Hermione and Ron now wore, expressions that suggested wordless horror. “Why should I? There are always going to be rumors about me, do what I can. I might as well spend the time that I would otherwise spend on counteracting them really  _living_.”  
  
“And that might be great as long as you’re going to just stay inside the Manor!” Ron’s jaw was jutting forwards. “But what happens when you want to go outside and rejoin the wizarding world when your year is up?”  
  
“Then I’m going to ask Draco for help,” Harry said steadily. “We can pretend that he cured me, and that might get him some credit with some people. But the main plan is still what it always was. We’re going to make people terrified of my magic, and carve out a place for me in that way.”  
  
“Oh, Harry,” Hermione whispered. “Does that mean that you’ve decided to stay in the wizarding world?”  
  
Harry moved his head impatiently and then stood up and walked over to the window. At a flicker of his will, it changed so it was showing a vision of the Forbidden Forest, a clearing right below the sill and images of aisles of trees leading away under a full moon. Harry leaned on the sill and let his mind fix on that moon, the serenity of it, and the stars shimmering all around it.  
  
“I haven’t decided yet,” he finally said.  
  
“But if you’re going to use the rumors of your magic to protect yourself, then you’re not going to the Muggle world. You  _can’t_.”  
  
Harry turned around and let his elbows support him as he glared a little at Hermione. “Yes, I  _can_ ,” he said. “Why not? I might just use those rumors to stop goblins or people from the wizarding world from coming after me, and leave anyway.”  
  
Hermione shot a nervous glance at Ron. Harry made a  _go-on_  gesture. Ron didn’t know the full extent of Harry’s relationship with Draco yet, but it wasn’t like Harry really intended to hide it from him. That would be both stupid and impossible, considering how close he and Ron were.  
  
“It’s just,” Hermione whispered, “that I think you should make up your mind soon. I thought you were going to make up your mind.”  
  
“Sure,” Harry said. “Someday.”  
  
“Harry…”  
  
“No,” said Harry, harshly enough to make Hermione jump and Ron look at him with a frown. “Sorry,” he added belatedly, looking down at the handprint he had made in the marble of the sill. The only bad part about awakening magic that could damage inorganic things was that it was the magic that sometimes responded now when he was angry, instead of what could damage organic things. “It’s just that people keep pressing me and pressing me. Draco did it, but now he’s backed off. And everyone was pressing me to become a slave when the goblins first announced what they wanted. I want to make up my own fucking mind. Okay?”  
  
Ron still looked a little askance at him, but Hermione slowly nodded. “All right. Just, make the right decision, Harry. Stay because you really want to. Or go to the Muggle world because you really want to. Don’t let anyone else influence what you choose.”  
  
Harry chose to respond to that with a snort and nothing else. Hermione was mental if she thought Harry could make the decision in a completely free frame of mind. He would have his friends tugging him to stay in the wizarding world even if he had gone through the goblins’ slavery, and he had the quiet freedom of the Muggle world calling him even now, when things were so much better.  
  
And then there was Draco.  
  
 _Am I in love with him?_  
  
Harry found it hard to say that he was, and he found it hard to say that he wasn’t. He had only been in love once before, with Ginny, and this was so different that he questioned whether they were the same experience.  
  
“How’s Ginny?” he asked abruptly, turning around. At least that was one way to dismiss the subject of Draco and his potential exile from the wizarding world and slavery and rumors and magic from his mind.   
  
Ron and Hermione exchanged sour looks. Then Ron said, “She’s fine. She says now that you never write to her.”  
  
“She hadn’t been writing to me,” said Harry, and he knew he sounded silly and defensive, but honestly, it was true. “I think that—well, the idea of me being enslaved by the goblins for a year got in the way of our being together the way that it got in the way of the rest of my normal life.”  
  
Ron leaned forwards, hands squeezing his knees as if he thought that way he would manage to get past the really awkward part of this conversation. “When you get out of Malfoy slavery, you can start dating her again.”  
  
“No,” Harry snapped before he thought about it.  
  
“What?” Ron looked honestly surprised, and Harry turned away and ran a hand down his face. This was one reason he hadn’t wanted to discuss Ginny with his friends, and he was going to discuss Draco, but it was hard.  
  
“It just isn’t going to happen,” said Harry and rapped his fingers on the windowsill and stared at the moon rising above the Forest without any feeling of peace, this time. Maybe he did need to make it clear where he stood on Draco for his friends’ sake, even though it wasn’t going to change the way that he and Draco interacted. “Listen. I don’t know if I’m going to stay in the wizarding world. I don’t know exactly how people will react to me when this is done, or what the goblins will do. I know what Draco and I are going to  _try_ to manipulate them into doing. But that’s all.”  
  
“Right,” said Ron cautiously.  
  
Harry took a deep breath and said, “But I know one thing. I’m not going to stop being grateful to the Malfoys. I might not even stop living with them, if I choose to stay in the wizarding world. And Draco and I are lovers, and I can’t see that changing unless we have a spectacular fight or he absolutely refuses to accept you lot or something. He won’t just let me go, because he’s possessive like that.”  
  
Ron’s mouth hung open, and his face turned crimson. Then he looked off to the side and muttered something Harry couldn’t make out.  
  
Hermione was the one who put a hand on Ron’s shoulder and reached out her other hand to Harry, her face serious and steady. “Harry. You know we’ll support you whatever decisions you make.”  
  
“But,” said Harry.  
  
Hermione blinked. “What?”  
  
“There was a ‘but’ coming up in there,” said Harry, even as he took a step forwards to clasp her hands. “You’ll support me, but you think that it would be better if I started dating Ginny and lived with you, right?”  
  
“In a place of your own, but yes.” Hermione sighed when Harry shook his head at her. “You’ve said how Malfoy is, but not how you are. Are you going to want to stay with him when this year is done?”  
  
“I don’t know yet.”  
  
“ _Harry_.”  
  
“It’s nothing more than the truth.” Harry shook his head, rolled it, stretched his arms. He wished that everyone would stop trying to sit on him and pressure him into an answer right away. “But I do know that I’m not going to move into my own house and stop dating Draco and start dating Ginny just because it would be the normal thing to do.”  
  
“She loves you.”  
  
“She has a funny way of showing it,” Harry snapped, and this time, he met Hermione’s eyes in his anger. “We didn’t even talk about the goblins’ slavery, as important as that was in my life. Maybe there were good reasons for that. But I think the  _best_ reason, the real one, is that we aren’t that important to each other. We never were. Maybe without the war, we could have been. But that’s not the way it worked out.”  
  
A second later, a tide of relaxation seemed to flow up the center of Harry’s spine and through his chest. He sighed in relief. He had finally made a decision, come to the kind of firm choice they were always pushing him to make. And it felt  _fantastic_.   
  
“You’re sure that you won’t change your mind about Malfoy?” Ron’s voice was small.  
  
“Do you mean, I’ll be his lover for the rest of our lives?” Harry raised his eyebrows in somewhat mocking response, and Ron flushed and looked away. “I don’t know, for the reasons that I just told you. But I’m sure that I’m not going to dump him in favor of Ginny.”  
  
“You don’t know how much that relieves me.”  
  
Harry turned around abruptly. Draco was leaning against the doorframe, his face so set that Harry wondered how long he’d been there, and what he’d heard.  
  
“You have to  _eavesdrop_ on our private conversations, Malfoy?” Ron was holding his wand, at least if his hand grip on his side through his robes was any indication. Harry sighed, shook his head, and jogged over to stand between Draco and his friend.  
  
“I wish he wouldn’t, either,” Harry said, and gave Draco a look that meant they would have words later. “But at least he knows where I stand, and I know where he stands, and we don’t have to worry about betrayal from each other.”  
  
“Except the betrayal of him listening to private conversations,” said Hermione, her arms folded.  
  
“Yes, that,” said Harry. “But we’ll be discussing it in private. I think you ought to leave now.” It struck him hard enough to flinch, the expression on Ron’s face, but this conversation wasn’t going to go anywhere good if they tried to have it now, and he wasn’t about to scold Draco in front of his friends. He softened his voice. “If you came hoping to persuade me back to Ginny’s side for  _Ginny_ , I’m sorry, but it’s not happening. If it was for any other reason, it still isn’t happening. I’m sorry.”  
  
“You don’t need to apologize for desiring what you want,” Draco whispered, and leaned into Harry, and kissed the side of his neck.  
  
Harry turned around sharply. “And  _you_ don’t start anything with them,” he warned. “I want everyone to get along as best they can. That means none of them cursing you, and none of you deliberately provoking them.” He looked deep into Draco’s eyes. “Do you understand that?”  
  
*  
  
Draco wanted to squirm. He wanted to say that he did understand, and defuse the fire in Harry’s eyes. He wanted to resist, and make Harry say outright what he wanted.  
  
But he didn’t do any of those things, because he also cared for Harry. And it would upset Harry if he felt like Draco was making him choose between Draco and his friends. He touched Harry’s shoulder instead.  
  
“I understand,” he said. “I only came to listen to the conversation because one of my Monitoring Charms went off.”  
  
“What?” Harry stepped back and turned around, looking at his friends as though he assumed they had cast an illegal spell.  
  
Granger was watching him, though, and with a clever and cynical eye that disconcerted Draco a little bit. “That would be because you had a Monitoring Charm attached to Ginny’s name, right?” she asked.  
  
“What?” Weasley was spluttering as usual. Draco had to wonder how Harry could find someone interesting when spitting barrel-loads of spit was their main expression.  
  
Draco nodded. “When Harry mentions her first name inside the Manor, I set up a charm to go off.” Only her first name, because the number of times that Harry spoke of the Weasley family was frankly too much to deal with.  
  
“ _Why_?” Harry was staring at him with not much better an expression than Weasley’s this time.  
  
Draco leaned on Harry and made him meet and hold Draco’s eyes, until he was quietly sure that there was no room for flinching in Harry’s expression. “Because I would have to worry about her being a rival, otherwise, and whether you were discussing her with your friends without me knowing about it. And I couldn’t stand that.”  
  
Harry shook his head, but Draco didn’t think it was in denial, or even in misunderstanding. “She’s not a rival. We—maybe there would have been something between us without the goblins enslaving me, but there’s nothing now.”  
  
“You’re going to say that about my sister, mate?” Weasley was coldly disapproving. “When you know that she would welcome you back into the family along with the rest of us when this year is done?”  
  
“It was never about family, Ron.” Harry turned around, and Draco grabbed his arm to make sure that he didn’t go too far away. Harry ignored the gesture utterly. Draco hoped that was because he was coming to treat Draco like part of his own body, and not because he was thinking too much about the conversation he was having with his friends. “Or not the kind of family that you mean. I considered making a different kind of family with Ginny, once. Now I’m not.”  
  
Draco whistled without sound. Now he understood why it had been so hard to persuade Harry to show interest in Draco himself, when Draco would have thought his own interest was long past obvious. Harry had never had sex with Weasley’s sister—Draco was pretty sure of that—but he had still flung himself headlong into fantasies of a family. That was obsessively monogamous, really.  
  
A second later, Draco smiled. That character trait could have been annoying, but it was going to work for him instead. Because there was no way that Harry would betray him casually or back away from him without a powerful motive.  
  
Of course, the hatred of goblins and other people in the wizarding world might provide that motive. So Draco would have to be careful and make sure that he was helping Harry to combat it and giving him love and a comfortable place to live at the same time.  
  
“What are you plotting, Malfoy?” Weasley demanded. “You’re always plotting  _something_.”  
  
Draco lifted his head in silent disdain. “I was thinking about the best way to protect Harry, actually,” he said, which was perfectly true. “We’ve spent enough time researching those distance rituals that I think he could threaten the Gringotts money if he wanted.”  
  
Once again, Harry turned to stare at him. Draco basked in it. Even if the emotion Harry was looking at him with was less than positive, he would rather be the center of Harry’s attention than the focus of anyone else’s adoration.  
  
“I thought that you said my control over inorganic magic wasn’t perfect yet.”  
  
“It isn’t,” Draco said. “But I do think we could reach into the bank. And maybe that’s all we’ll need, for a convincing demonstration.”  
  
“And maybe not,” Harry countered. “Once we succeed, they might strengthen the wards so that we can never try again. So I’d rather practice somewhere nearby first, and only try it when we  _know_ that it’s going to work.”  
  
Draco took another smug glance at Weasley and Granger, one that he was careful not to let  _appear_ smug.  _See?_ he wanted to say.  _He’s planning with me. I do have his best interests at heart. It wouldn’t be in his best interests to marry Weasley’s sister and raise a horde of red-haired brats with her. I can give him what he needs._  
  
“Let me be there when you try for the first time,” said Granger almost reluctantly, her gaze going back and forth between him and Harry. “You might need someone else to measure the magical effects.”  
  
“Sure, you can be,” said Harry, and then came down from standing on the balls of his feet, which Draco thought he might be the only person to realize Harry had been doing. “But you understand why I’m not going to come rushing back to the Burrow the minute my year is done and marry Ginny? Or even write to her first? I’ll write to her if she writes to me, but we’ve gone this long without a letter. I think the silence has said most of what we would otherwise.”  
  
Weasley grumbled and whinged, but he didn’t say anything convincing, and Draco had the feeling that he knew when he’d lost. Granger was the one who gave pointed glances back and forth between them, and then a special pointed glance at Harry, who ignored it magnificently.  
  
He did give Draco a single pointed look of his own after they left, though, and said, “You needn’t think that this means I’ve made the decision to stay with you permanently, either. I haven’t yet.”  
  
Because Draco was smart, and a Slytherin, he knew when not to push. He just nodded meekly and asked, “So where do you want to try to reach with your magic first?”


	21. Among the Malfoys

“My husband would like to speak you when you have the time, Harry,” Narcissa said around the newspaper at breakfast that morning.  
  
Harry licked his lips. His mouth was full, of saliva not food, and he couldn’t speak. He ended up nodding and going back to his plate as though there was nothing else that was important in the world. But even the pumpkin juice he managed to swallow tasted sour.  
  
“What is it?” Draco whispered to him, leaning over and nearly planting his elbow in the middle of the buttered toast Harry was trying to eat. “What’s wrong?”  
  
“What if your father wants me to leave, or doesn’t approve of what we’re doing?” Harry murmured back, when he had control of himself. He was sure that Narcissa was listening to every word, but he couldn’t bring himself to care. She was pretending not to listen, anyway. “You know that he’s the head of the Malfoy family, and you keep telling me how important that is.”  
  
Draco’s hand pressed down hard on his, for a second, and then his voice was clear in the next moment—clear and angry. “And you think I would listen to him and throw you out of the house? Or that he would go back on the payment of the life-debt and take his protection away from you before a year is done?”  
  
Harry hesitated. He hadn’t meant it that way, but of course he had implied it that way. And the more he thought about it, the more he decided that he was being a little paranoid.  
  
“Well, all right,” he conceded with difficulty. “But I thought that he probably wouldn’t like all the details of the plan we concocted to fool the reporters. I’m amazed that he hasn’t wanted to talk to me about it before.”  
  
“He would have,” said Narcissa. Perhaps she knew that maintaining her pretense of ignoring them was both stupid and harmful. She folded the paper up, folded her arms on top of it, and gave Harry an encouraging smile. “But he thought that speaking to you too short a time after the first deception would only strengthen those feelings that I understand you used to scare the reporters.”  
  
“He can’t make me turn away from you just by disapproving of you,” Draco said firmly. “Sure, there are things you could do that would strain—this—” And he made a vague little motion between them. Harry smiled faintly, a bit encouraged to see that Draco had no idea what to call it, either. “Like trying to steal from us, or something. But I can’t imagine that you would really ever do that, and it’s stupid for you to worry about it. Okay?”  
  
“Okay,” Harry whispered, and nodded a few times when Draco stared at him. “Does Lucius want to see me alone?” he added to Narcissa.  
  
“Yes,” said Narcissa. “Not so he can eat you, or bury the bones in an unknown place,” she added, perhaps seeing that Harry was still tense. “But he does want to discuss with you what this means for the future. And what will happen if you stay with us and in the wizarding world when the year is up.”  
  
“Right,” Harry echoed, frowning. The last thing he needed was someone  _else_ pressing him to make a decision right bloody now.  
  
“That’s the spirit,” said Draco, and only grinned when Harry glared at him. “Just remind yourself that you’ve defeated a Dark Lord, and my father’s a lot less intimidating, and you’ve got what you need.”  
  
Harry cuffed the back of Draco’s head, because he really did deserve it, and then nodded to Narcissa. “Where does he want to meet me?”  
  
“In the library with the magical books that comforted you before, is what he told me.”  
  
 _Of course it’s there,_ Harry thought. But the more he thought about it, the more he decided that Lucius probably hadn’t even meant to intimidate him. It was the sort of manipulation that he seemed to practice as easily as he breathed, to the point where he didn’t notice when he did it anymore.  
  
“All right,” he said, and sat back down to finish his breakfast, because Draco insisted, and Narcissa told him it would be good for Lucius to wait. She didn’t mention who it was good  _for._ Harry did notice that.  
  
*  
  
“Ah, Mr. Potter. Come in.”  
  
The Potter boy still hesitated before he crossed into the library, as if he thought that Lucius would have had time to trap the shelves to tip over on him. Lucius put down the book he had been reading—one the library had chosen for him—and put his fingers together as he watched the current source of his problems approach.  
  
Not  _all_ his problems, Lucius admitted. Most of those stemmed from the war and his own choices. But he had not been pleased when he realized how close this boy was growing to his own, what paths that opened, reaching into the future. And less pleased when he realized how they planned to dim the gossip of the reporters and the demands that Potter be released at once.  
  
“Well?”   
  
That was Potter, standing in front of him with so much fire in his eyes that Lucius had to change his mind on at least one point. This was not a boy who would tamely submit to whatever someone else planned to ask of him. Perhaps the tactics that he and Draco had chosen could be made to work, after all.  
  
“I presume you know what kind of future we planned for Draco?” Lucius asked, and deliberately didn’t specify whether he meant himself and Narcissa, or the whole family, with Draco in the basket with them.  
  
There was a fleeting frown from Potter, as though he had noticed the omission, but he went on without saying anything about it. “I think it was a future like the one you have. He would marry someone from another pure-blood family and have one child and—live in luxury, I suppose.”  
  
There was a little catch at the end of his words. It was hard for Lucius to tell if it came from the thought of Draco living a separate life from him or from the thought of losing the luxury that he must be growing used to.  
  
“Yes,” said Lucius. “Hopefully more than one child, and hopefully no more Dark Lords.” He had thought that a good joke, but Potter stared back at him without moving, and Lucius waved him to a seat in irritation. “You’re giving me too many flashbacks to duels, standing like that and looking at me.”  
  
Potter hissed under his breath in a way that made Lucius flinch visibly—it reminded him too much of Parseltongue—and took his seat with an ill grace. “How have I changed that life? You know he might still do that, after he falls out of his infatuation with me.”  
  
Lucius paused. Here was a course that he had not considered: convincing Potter that Draco would not want him for long, playing on his damaged vision of self-worth and prying them apart that way.  
  
But he suspected that Potter would say something about it to Draco, and Draco would be upset. And there was the sudden, terrible sensation, like a memory itself, of what would happen when Narcissa found out he had done something like that.  
  
Forging ahead, Lucius said, “I think you underestimate the amount of—interest that Draco has in you.” There were words that he could not bring himself to speak when he was discussing the matter with an old enemy, no matter how much Narcissa might argue, and Lucius privately agree, that they applied to the situation.  
  
Potter sat up, and Lucius didn’t miss the way his eyes brightened. Then they went hard again. “But you don’t like the idea of me—what? Knocking him away from his marriage?”  
  
“He would find some way to make sure the Malfoy line continues,” said Lucius. He had long suspected that Draco would not marry as young as he and Narcissa had. Not only had Lucius concentrated on other things during Draco’s years at Hogwarts rather than finding an acceptable bride for him, but Draco had never seemed taken with someone at first sight the way Lucius and Narcissa had been with each other.  
  
 _Except…who did he meet and talk about endlessly that summer before Hogwarts, without even knowing his name, until his mother had to ban the subject at the dinner table?_  
  
Lucius grimaced a little. He did not like to remember that, or to settle yet another score in the long-running battle between them in his wife’s favor.  
  
“Then I don’t understand. Why are you so upset about it?”  
  
“Are you serious?” Lucius managed to keep the surprise out of his face and voice, he thought, as he sat up and focused on Potter, but it was more difficult than it should have been. “It puts my son in danger. The sort of danger that you always draw with you, and the danger that comes from people thinking that he’s the one who’s mutilated Harry Potter’s soul. Of course that sort of danger concerns me.”  
  
Potter leaned slowly back in his chair. His face was more speculative than Lucius liked.  
  
Of course, nothing about this meeting was to Lucius’s liking. He cast a glance at the book next to him. He was following its advice, the advice the library had picked out for him, but he wondered if all that advice was equally wise.  
  
“I will protect him,” Potter said. “I would guard him with my life.”  
  
“I know that you have the power to guard him,” said Lucius, and he let his voice be sharp. Narcissa would not be pleased, but he doubted Potter would describe the exact tone of his words to her, and he wanted to make this point. “But you cannot be everywhere at once, and all it takes is one person with a ready wand, a curse, and the temper to think they are avenging you. This deception makes things worse  _for him_. Now, do you understand?”  
  
Potter was still, his head bowed as though he was listening to a distant wind. Then he nodded and said, “I think so.”  
  
Lucius relaxed despite himself. “Then you understand why you need to start a new rumor circulating, a new piece of gossip. That’s vitally important. The best way to protect Draco is to start a rumor that will take the heat off him.”  
  
“I thought you would know better than that,” said Potter, and had the cheek to look  _disappointed_ in him. “We’re confined by the bounds of the game we’ve already set up. We can’t just go back and announce that we were kidding, and Draco isn’t restraining me after all, and I’m sane. Isn’t that what you want us to do?” Again his eyes seemed to pierce Lucius, and Lucius thought irrationally that it was unfair for an enemy to have eyes that color, so bright.  
  
“You will think of something to do.”  
  
“How should I?” Potter held his hands out and turned them back and forth as if inviting Lucius to look at the broom-calluses on them. “I only came up with this way to fight in the first place because I happened to have magic that my rage had festered into. I couldn’t have done it without that. And we would still stand the chance of the goblins finding out the truth and coming down on us with all their wrath if we made a different announcement. No, we have to keep going.”  
  
“How will you keep Draco safe?” Lucius closed one fist on his lap, and let Potter see it. “You have condemned him to a life behind wards.”  
  
Potter laughed harshly. “No more than I’ve condemned myself. I would never have been safe after this, even if I’d served out the goblins’ slavery. That was why I planned to go to the Muggle world—the  _main_ reason. I was angry at the people who wouldn’t stand up for me, but I also knew that they would be afraid of me once they found out about my magic, and they would want me to save the world again if another Dark Lord came rising, and they might try to arrest me for some other ‘crime’ I committed during the war.”  
  
He stood up and paced towards Lucius, who tried his best to look as though he had anticipated this turn in the conversation. “The only way I can stay safe—from wizards  _or_ goblins—is to threaten them with my magic, make them know what I can do, and insist on being left in peace. Melt their cameras, burn their letters, disintegrate their wands. Threaten their money,” he added softly. “You might want to remove the Malfoy money from your vaults before it gets to that point. They might try to take it from you in revenge.”  
  
“They won’t want to leave you in peace if you continue this deception.”  
  
Potter rolled his eyes. “They don’t want to do that now. I kind of wonder how normal my life would have been even if I became an Auror and the goblins didn’t try to enslave me. They would send me Howlers, requests for interviews, demands for commentary on everything that happened in the wizarding world. They’d make me donate money and save them and live up to their standards, and yell at me when I fell beneath them. A Death Eater could try to take me down, or someone who wants revenge because I lived through the war and someone they loved didn’t.”  
  
Potter took a deep breath and stared off into the distance. Lucius wondered exactly who he felt guilty over.  
  
But Potter shook his head and turned back, and there was a savage spark in his eyes. “I know this isn’t easy for you to comprehend, Lucius, but Draco entered the fray of his own free will. He was the one who wanted to help me trick the reporter, instead of calling on you the way I did when the goblins visited. This is done, now. Hell,  _you_ might be in danger if the goblins tell other people the way you supposedly made me kneel to you.”  
  
That aspect of the situation had not previously occurred to Lucius, perhaps because he had become resigned to spending much of his remaining life behind wards. He let Potter see the arch of his neck, the fire in his eyes. “They will not find me easy prey.”  
  
“And you think Draco  _is_ easy?”  
  
Lucius blinked. That sounded harsher than he had meant it to be, the rational statement of his fears changed into an insult in Potter’s mouth. “I believe that he could very well be in danger.”  
  
“Then believe that I’ll also be protecting him.” Potter gave him a firm nod. “I know what you’ve done for me, but even more than that, I know what Draco means to me.”  
  
“And what does he mean to me?”  
  
“Something like home,” said Potter, and for the first time since Lucius had called him into the library, his voice wavered. “Something like affection. I don’t know how far it’ll go, what we can name it, but I  _do_ know that this is—something I want.”  
  
That Potter could fight fiercely for something he wanted, Lucius knew full well. He had seen the boy survive a war and bring down a Dark Lord to have the peace he wanted. And for the first time, it struck Lucius as a terrible pity that he should not have that peace before being flung headlong into another crisis.  
  
“I shall trust you as much as I can,” said Lucius. It was an admission for him, one that had a price, and while Potter might not appreciate the full extent of that price, at least he knew there was one. That knowledge was in his slow nod.  
  
“Good,” said Potter. “And I promise that I’ll show you as much trust as I can, and your son and wife far more.”  
  
He slipped out of the library. Lucius waited until he was sure that Potter was not coming back in to say anything else, and then turned and stared at the book on the chair beside him.  
  
 _Encouraging Trust_ was the title.  
  
Well. The library had fulfilled its promise.  
  
*  
  
Harry shook his head once he stood in the corridor again. Had he actually spoken to  _Lucius Malfoy_ and had that kind of conversation with him?  
  
Yes, he had. And while Harry doubted he would ever be comfortable with Lucius, at least he had his blessing and permission to be comfortable with Draco.  
  
Who Harry now wanted to find.  
  
He left to do so, his heart considerably lighter than before.


	22. Lo, the Conquering Heroine

“One more time.”  
  
Harry nodded and closed his eyes. The small pile of stones in front of him hadn’t yet crumbled or turned to dust. He needed to  _make_ them do that if this plan was going to succeed. He took one deep breath, then another, and opened his eyes.  
  
He thought of the goblins, their smug faces and the way they’d chattered to each other when they were at the Manor and Harry was playing the obedient slave as if he couldn’t hear them. As if he was nothing more than a statue that they might prop in the corner or have lick their shoes, if that was what they wanted, and expect to obey their every command. He thought of it, and felt the heat leak through his blood and curve up his spine and lift his lips in a snarl of hatred.  
  
Draco sounded as though he had backed away. Harry couldn’t look at him, though, too involved in the sight of that small pile of stones and the goblin faces that his imagination had superimposed over them. He flung out a hand towards them, and imagined the goblin faces laughing at him and more voices requesting whether Lucius and Draco might share their slave.  
  
“Yagh!” he yelled, and the magic broke from him and aimed at the pile of stones in the middle of the marked circle on the floor the way the sound broke from his mouth.  
  
The stones smoked and twisted around each other, and then  _melted._  A pile of slag lay where they had been. Harry blinked and massaged his hand. His fingers felt blistered, although he couldn’t actually see any marks on the tips, where the magic felt as if it had come out.  
  
“Very impressive,” Draco whispered. He sounded shaken.  
  
Harry looked at him and smiled a little. “That’s the first time I’ve done it without touching something, yes,” he said. “That means we’re ready to interact some more with those distance rituals, don’t you think?”  
  
Draco still nodded, looking more than a little dazed. Then it was a brisk headshake and a return to the present before Harry could ask if he was all right about seeing Harry wield wandless magic from a distance. “Yes, quite. In the meantime--”  
  
“In the meantime, I don’t think this partnership is going to work if you’re afraid of me,” Harry interrupted him, and briskly walked forwards.  
  
Draco arched his neck and watched him come. He looked wary, concerned. Harry stopped in front of him and lifted his hands to frame Draco’s face, although he was careful not to actually touch him.  
  
“Hey,” he whispered. “It’s still me. I’m still the one who only knelt at your feet because he had to. I’m still the one you can trust. It’s all right.”  
  
Draco nodded, then nodded again as though trying to convince himself. Harry restrained the growl he wanted to give. Draco had probably never seen magic done like that without a wand. Or maybe it reminded him of something during the war that he would rather forget. The least Harry could do was be patient with someone who had given so much of himself and his time to training Harry.  
  
“Yes,” Draco said, and then said it more strongly, “Yes,” and stepped into Harry’s waiting arms. They stood like that for a moment, with Draco’s breathing slowly falling into a normal pattern, making Harry aware for the first time of how fast it had been. He rubbed up and down Draco’s back, and murmured things that had no words. Draco leaned into him and said the same mindless kinds of words into his shoulder.  
  
“I really need you,” Draco said, as if confessing a shameful secret. “And sometimes it appalls me how much.”  
  
Harry let that go. He could understand the sentiment behind it, sometimes, when he really sat down and  _thought_ about what it meant that he was sharing his life with Draco, someone he couldn’t even have looked at a few years ago. “We’ll get past it,” he said instead, and let his head rest on Draco’s shoulder in turn. “The fear that we feel and that the goblins encourage us to feel.” He lifted his head to grin at Draco. “And maybe this means that you ought to tell your father to remove the gold from his vaults. We’re probably near the verge of a meltdown.”  
  
*  
  
Narcissa paused before she knocked. Most of the time, she wouldn’t have interrupted someone who seemed to need silence for his composition as much as Harry did, but on the other hand, he had been struggling alone for hours now.  
  
And she thought she might have the solution to a problem that shouldn’t have become as complicated and knotty as it had. If he would listen, at least.  
  
The door flung open, and Harry stuck out his head and snarled, “ _What_?” in a way that changed immediately to a kind of droopy dog’s face when he saw Narcissa. He shook his head in a way that also reminded Narcissa of a dog shedding water, and said, “I’m sorry, I thought it was Lucius.”  
  
“Would you have truly greeted my husband with that much violence?” Narcissa had to ask, interested despite herself.  
  
Harry gave her a flat look, as though wondering why she was here if she only wanted to defend Lucius, and then sighed and said, “He keeps urging me to wait and not use the threat of melting their money against the goblins. He says that if he took his money out, they would see something was wrong and get the urge to investigate.”  
  
Narcissa shook her head. “Of course they would do that, if they were given too much warning of the threat. But they shall not be.” She stepped into the bedroom, and Harry was so surprised that he let her come in, although he twisted around to watch her as though he wasn’t sure where she was going to end up. Narcissa stood in front of the cascade and let the water run through her hands, enjoying the cool touch, before she focused on him. “I wanted to offer to write the letter that you’re struggling with.”  
  
Harry turned and glanced guiltily at what looked like a pile of dust and ashes on his desk. “I get so angry that I end up destroying the quill and the parchment every time,” he muttered.  
  
Narcissa nodded. She had thought something like that might be the case. “Well, then. I wish that you will allow me to write it for you, and make it a masterpiece of elegant threatening. We will pretend that it comes from Lucius, of course.”  
  
“Can you disguise your handwriting as his?” Harry followed her over to the table, where Narcissa sat down and pulled a fresh sheet of parchment towards her. She was pleased there was some left. It wasn’t long ago, she thought, that Harry would have let his magic flow over everything organic in the area if he was this frustrated. He was learning control, although sometimes Lucius muttered about it.  
  
“I can do more than that,” Narcissa said. “I can disguise my phrasing as his, and they will have no suspicion they are reading a letter composed by someone else.”  
  
Harry nodded as he watched Narcissa sharpen the quill and dip it in the ink. “I’m afraid that I’m just not good at this part of it,” he muttered, shaking his head. “Not good at threatening people, I mean. I want to just go and show them what my magic can do.”  
  
Narcissa smiled and began to write, the words coming the more easily the more she thought about them.  
  
 _To the goblins of Gringotts._  
  
 _I have learned of the interference that you planned for my slave. I have learned of the way that you planned to put to use my vaults when I was briefly in Azkaban prison. I have learned of many things that you would have wished to hide from me._  
  
 _Effective today, I will be removing all my money from Gringotts. Vaults are to be emptied and all coins, artifacts, books, and other objects that my ancestors or I placed within your keeping are to be returned, undamaged. If I hear that you have disobeyed any of these terms, I will tell the other wizarding banks of Europe exactly how well Gringotts keeps its promises._  
  
 _You should know that I have also discovered what my slave has become—_ before  _my son made the announcement that has been horrifying British wizarding audiences in the papers—and he has other magic at his command that you may wish to consider. It is good that I was the one to take him in charge, and not you. He has the power to threaten all you love, as much as he can threaten a wizard’s wand. Meditate on that when you next plan to work around my generous gift of a vault, and may it choke you._  
  
 _Lucius Malfoy._  
  
Narcissa leaned back to admire her effect, both on the words and on the wide-eyed young man in front of her. He shook his head and swore under his breath, although not enough under his breath to avoid Narcissa hearing. He caught her eye and blurted out, “Is this something you do all the time?”  
  
“Which one?” His reaction was even more gratifying than Narcissa had hoped. She touched the parchment and admired it for a moment. “Impersonate my husband? Or threaten people?”  
  
“Oh, I assumed you did the second one,” said Harry, with so much seriousness that Narcissa’s brows rose and she had to wonder what Draco  _had_ been telling him. “But impersonating Lucius. He won’t like that, will he?”  
  
“I assure you, he appreciated my efforts when he was in Azkaban.” Narcissa stood. “But it will also help to sow a bit of confusion. The goblins have undoubtedly heard about Draco claiming you as his bed partner.” It was the closest she could come to naming what Draco and Harry had pretended without wrinkling her nose in disgust. “They will wonder and be alarmed to hear that Lucius is now claiming you as his slave.”  
  
Harry’s eyes lowered to the floor. Narcissa reached out and caught his chin without thinking, the same way she would do to Draco if Draco was acting ashamed in front of her for something he ought not to be ashamed of.  
  
“Never let me see you mourn for a pretense that was  _forced_ upon you,” she told him. “It is not your fault, and certainly not your fault that the wizarding world found it convenient to abandon you to your fate when you had done so much for them. This is not what you should worry about. The only thing you need to concern yourself with is living well now. And your vengeance against the goblins, but I don’t think I need to persuade you to worry about that.”  
  
“What about the contradiction?” Harry asked, and from the way he was staring at her, she had at least made him think, if not believe her. “The goblins might show someone that letter, and that person might report that I somehow belong to Lucius and Draco both at once.”  
  
“That is the last thing I am concerned about, given the secretive nature of goblins.” Narcissa released Harry’s chin; he was getting uncomfortable, and she could tell. “They will keep the letter to themselves, and watch and worry. Perhaps they’ll try to persuade Lucius to keep his money in the bank, but even that will be a loss of face and a show that they are concerned about the threat a human can pose. I think it much more likely they’ll comply and spend months worrying about what they did and if it was the right decision.”  
  
Harry’s eyes lit with the kind of fire that Narcissa often saw in Draco’s after she had praised him. “That’s more  _like_ it.”  
  
“I thought so,” said Narcissa, amused, and made her way to the door. She did think it worthwhile to turn around once she had reached it and added, “Oh, Harry?”  
  
Harry looked back up at her, so cautious that he broke her heart. Narcissa maintained the bland smile that he would probably expect of her, however, and murmured, “I want you to understand that this is your household, and you are welcome here. Anything I can do for you, I will. Is that understood?”  
  
Harry opened his mouth, and Narcissa thought, from the old, cynical look in his eyes, that he was about to ask whether she could bring his parents back.  
  
But a second later, he turned his head away and gave a tiny nod. “I’ve never had someone offer me that before and have me really believe they could save me,” he said. “I’ll keep it in mind.”  
  
Narcissa could have said many other things, but she thought she had made her impression. She left, mind humming all the way down the stairs.  
  
After all, if this was the young man Draco had chosen to share his life with, Narcissa ought to get to know him as well as she once would have expected to know her daughter-in-law. 


	23. Goings-On

“I am not to hear what goings-on occur in my own house, I suppose.”  
  
Though Lucius’s voice was aggrieved, Narcissa knew that he wasn’t truly angry, because he would have come in cold silence and sat at the head of the table if that was the case. Instead, she could look up at him, seated directly across from her, and reply with mild warmth, “I knew that you would approve of the letter, or I would not have sent it.”  
  
“You did, did you?”  
  
Narcissa used her napkin to conceal her smile. Another sign of her husband’s true feelings was that he had not started his complaints until Draco and Harry had left the table. He would have spoken out with cold anger if he felt that way, not caring if he hurt Draco’s feelings or not. “Yes, I did. You want the goblins to pay for having put you in this uncomfortable position.”  
  
Lucius developed a great interest in the half-eaten contents of his plate.  
  
“I know you do,” said Narcissa, and reached across the table to clasp his hand. Lucius said nothing, but turned to hold her fingers when she rubbed his wedding ring. “And so do I. I enjoyed writing that letter as I have enjoyed nothing since we first decided to pay the life-debt to Harry.”  
  
“You call him by his first name, then.” Lucius spoke the words with as much flat control as Narcissa thought he would be able to muster in front of the goblins themselves, but then his exasperation boiled over. “You, too?”  
  
“I speak it for different motives than Draco, of course,” Narcissa said, placidly agreeing without agreeing. “I have already met the man I am in love with.”  
  
At least this time Lucius’s returning exasperated glance was tinted with fondness. Narcissa smiled and caressed his hand again.  
  
“But for one of the same motives,” Narcissa continued. She wanted Lucius to understand this, before he put his foot in his mouth in a way that would hurt their son as well as their guest. “Because I want to understand the man Draco has chosen to share his life.”  
  
“Boy,” Lucius muttered, and once again his plate was the recipient of a glare.  
  
Narcissa shook her head. “If you believe he is a child after what he has gone through, then I must accuse you of having no eyes.”  
  
Lucius tightened his grip on her hand a moment, but in a way that meant he didn’t agree with her yet. “Draco is young. I know that he is—devoted to the boy. Infatuated with him. I have agreed to a truce with Mr. Potter that he understands, as well. But I see no reason yet to assume that our association with him must be permanent.”  
  
“Draco’s devotion does not abate,” said Narcissa quietly. “He was infatuated with people and things, yes, and he always let them pass from his mind quickly.” She and Lucius shared a smile then, though it seemed against Lucius’s will. Narcissa knew they were both remembering some of the brooms and toys and friends that Draco had once passionately insisted he couldn’t live without. “But for how long have we been hearing about Harry Potter?”  
  
Lucius looked off into the distance, at the wall.  
  
“Harry told me that you discussed some of this with him,” Narcissa said. She and Harry had spoken after Harry had sent the letter, and he had told her that much. “He said you understood each other. Why this reverse now?”  
  
“Because I spoke to him alone, and I had not seen, or not noticed, the way that he interacted with Draco.” Lucius would have stood and prowled the room, as was his habit when this disturbed, but Narcissa squeezed his hand and kept him with her. “I had not seen Draco practically climb into the boy—Potter’s _lap_. Is he going to have the respect that he needs to command, if someone else sees him acting like that? It seems that we brought Potter into our house as a slave, but Draco is the one who wears the collar in that relationship.”  
  
Narcissa’s eyes widened, and then she laughed.  
  
Her husband glared at her, but Narcissa shook her head and held up one hand, and Lucius subsided enough to listen. It was partially because he liked to listen to her laughter, Narcissa knew, and less because he respected her words. But that didn’t matter. What _mattered_ was that he paused.  
  
“Draco is the one who kept pushing for the connection between them when Harry would have been content to ignore it,” she said, when she could speak. “It’s true that Harry has powerful magic and he could bring the world to kneel at his feet if he wanted. He could do that using the power of his name alone, I think, without the added impetus of his magic. But Draco is the one who wanted to be with him, and he is the one who adds the energy and drive to their relationship. His was the idea of vengeance on the goblins, if not the pure impulse. I don’t think you need to fear for him.”  
  
“I hope so,” said Lucius, and did some more frowning that he appeared to think was impressive. “I told Draco that I would tolerate this _relationship_ of his. But not if it makes him less a Malfoy.”  
  
“In what way is he disdaining your lessons?” Narcissa asked. “He understands his own desires and is trying to get what he wants. In a way that doesn’t demean his name or himself. And he has found a partner who will stand beside him, a partner he can be proud of. I don’t think any of that is a problem, or untrue to his heritage.”  
  
Lucius sighed again. “Our son is going to end up with Potter, isn’t he?”  
  
“At least for a time,” said Narcissa, and petted his arm with her free hand. “Perhaps it won’t last forever in terms of them being lovers. But at the very least, they’ll be connected for the rest of their lives, I think. And that’s not even talking about the life-debts that bind them. Harry hasn’t repaid the one he owes me. And there may still be one that he owes Draco.”  
  
Lucius closed his eyes tightly. He looked a little ill. “As long as I need not—see anything of it.”  
  
Narcissa mercifully changed the subject, while silently reminding herself to tell Draco to practice strong locking charms.  
  
*  
  
"I think we have to talk about this."  
  
Draco hunched his shoulders and stared harder at the book in front of him, the one that described cases that sounded a little like Harry's--mostly wizards who had been through some great betrayal or trauma of war that made their magic curdle and turn even more dangerous. "It's okay," he said, and turned a page. "It's not like I'm afraid that you're going to use that magic on me, and you're gaining much more control with the business rituals."   
  
"I didn't mean that you were afraid I was going to use the magic on you _deliberately_ ," Harry said, and his heavy hand fell on Draco's shoulder. "But I don't want you to be afraid of even an accident."  
  
Draco sighed and turned around. "What can I say?" he asked, tilting his head back so that Harry's hand could slide into his hair. "I know you care for me. I know that you have much better control now of your power than you did."  
  
"But?" Harry was standing behind Draco, massaging his neck. Draco decided he didn't like that, and turned around so that they were face to face.  
  
"But I know that you also are so much more powerful than I can even begin to comprehend. Sometimes I worry about what that means for me."  
  
Harry, to Draco's pleasure, took some time to think about it, instead of immediately snapping that he didn't understand what Draco meant and why he would even be worried. "You're worried that you might slip into my shadow?" he asked, and the grip of his hand was even tighter on Draco's shoulder.  
  
"Exactly," Draco whispered, and leaned against him. "Like Weasley."  
  
"Ron is _not_ in my shadow," said Harry, and he sounded genuinely angry. Draco rolled his eyes. It was true that he didn't often see signs of jealousy in Weasley, but they were there, and Harry was the one who ought to be paying enough attention to his best friend to see them, instead of Draco having to tell him about them.  
  
But Draco didn't want to have an argument about Weasley right now, so he said, "That's what I'm afraid of, though. That I'll become completely of no account. That, that you might decide to leave me and be with someone who can challenge you more, or match you more. Magically, anyway." He wasn't about to say that he thought he was really stupider than Harry or not a good match for him in other ways.  
  
"I don't want that." Harry's voice had lowered to that intense whisper Draco was accustomed to hear when Harry really meant something, was really _concentrating_ on something. "What I want is you, alive, healthy, and ready to walk beside me."  
  
"But why?" Draco hated how needy he sounded, but at least he and Harry were alone, without an audience, even his father. _Especially_ his father, he thought, and tilted his head further back to hold Harry's eyes. "What do I have that you can't find elsewhere?"  
  
Harry stared at him for a second as though wondering what he meant, and then began to smile. He bent down and stared into Draco's eyes.  
  
"You were the one who approached me first," he said. "You didn't do it because you're impressed by my Boy-Who-Lived credentials. You're the one who told me about revenge through living well, and through getting back at the goblins this way."  
  
Draco listened in breathless silence, and then began breathing on purpose. He needed to hear this, yes, but there was no point in making it more dramatic than it really was.  
  
"And you're the one who can play my _master_ in these charades that we put on, but still treat me respectfully behind closed doors," said Harry, and gave him a quick kiss on the cheek. "You haven't got hung up on your family traditions or tried to make me behave in a certain way because of them. If someone had asked me whether we could ever be friends, I would have said no, because I would have thought that that was what was going to happen."  
  
"I hope we're more than _friends_ ," said Draco, daring a little.  
  
Harry laughed without opening his mouth. "We are," he said. "I was just giving an example. I don't think _anyone_ would have asked me if we could be lovers before we became that way."  
  
 _Lovers. So there._ Draco felt a tingling thrill run through him, an invisible rejection of the kind of statement that people who were trying to separate him and Harry--like Harry's friends--might have made. They could say that Harry had never used the word before, or didn't mean that he and Draco were lovers even when he was enjoying Draco's attention.  
  
But now they were. Harry had said so.   
  
Draco lifted a hand and placed it on Harry's cheek. "You're impressive, you know," he said, and persisted when Harry made a face. "Your magic. You're impressively strong. You _are_."  
  
"Do you know how little I care about that?" Harry demanded, his eyes blazing. "What matters to me the most is that someone can love me and care for me and fight for me, and you do all that. And you'll let me love you and care for you and fight for you in return. Some people would only want one or the other. You don't."  
  
If Draco was a more honest person, a more _Gryffindor_ person, committed to giving Harry all the choices available, he might have said that Harry only held onto those standards because he hadn't met many potential lovers. He could ask for far more, and dozens of people would be delighted to give it to him.  
  
But Draco was the one who was here, and who had got here first. And he never planned to give that position up.  
  
"Kiss me, if you're so swept up in demonstrating my fitness to be with you," he said.  
  
And Harry did, hard enough to make Draco breathless all over again.  
  
*  
  
"Since you helped to bring them here, you can help to put them away."  
  
Those were the first words Harry heard, coming down the staircase in the morning for breakfast. He stopped and stared at the trunks of money--well, some of them had coins spilling out of them, and some of them had jewelry, and some books, and some cups that reminded Harry of Hufflepuff's cup--sitting in the entrance hall.  
  
Lucius saw him looking, and gave him a small, nasty smile. "My wife tells me that she wrote a letter 'suggesting' that the goblins send all the contents of my vaults home."  
  
"I can help you set up protections," Harry offered, interested. He and Draco had done some research on wards, too, because there was always the chance that the goblins would try to spy on what Harry was doing through the Manor's wards. It would be a good idea to know how to strengthen them.  
  
"No, I want you to help _carry_ ," Lucius directed, as though Harry was deaf.  
  
Harry halted and tilted his head back slowly. It was so slowly that Lucius should have been warned, but he went on scowling at Harry. "Are you deaf, boy? Did you hear what I said?"  
  
"Yeah," said Harry lightly, and he felt the stones beneath his feet tremble a little. "But you have house-elves who can do that sort of manual duty, and I'm not your _boy_."  
  
Lucius opened his mouth and then paused. A second later, he said, "You are right that we did not bring you in as a slave for the sake of doing manual work."  
  
"Too bloody right you didn't," Harry breathed. He felt--well, roused and dangerous. Currents in his veins seemed to shimmer and shift around as though he was floating on a sea made of blood. And the stones beneath his feet were powdering. He shifted a step over, and the line between two flagstones blurred.  
  
Lucius's eyes flickered downwards, and then rose back to Harry's feet as though he couldn't bear the sight of what was happening to the floor. "Mr. Potter, I _forbid_ you to destroy my house!"  
  
"Maybe you should have bloody thought of that before you made me angry," said Harry.  
  
He just had to lean forwards a little, he thought, and touch Lucius, and that would be the end of _that_ problem. He was more tempted to destroy a person than he had been since the goblins first proposed enslaving him.  
  
He held himself back more because of Draco than anything else. Draco wouldn't want his father destroyed. Draco would understand that he was angry, but not understand Lucius's death. Harry lashed down cords of self-control over the straining emotions and turned away, walking outside. He would destroy the Manor if he stayed inside it, or parts of it, and the gardens would presumably be easier to repair.  
  
It was maybe an hour later that Draco came to find him, sitting down on the bench beside him. Harry was gripping the metal and thinking about the flowers in front of him to keep from lashing out. The flowers were beautiful, and hadn't done him any harm, and he wanted them to continue to exist.  
  
"You missed breakfast," said Draco, in a voice as light grey as some of the Manor's walls.  
  
Harry shut his eyes and shook his head.  
  
Draco paused, then let one hand rest on his arm. "My father makes you that angry?"  
  
"When he orders me to carry the boxes of artifacts and money as if I _was_ a slave."  
  
"I see," said Draco. "If you knew that my mother and I have both talked to him, would that make you feel better?"  
  
Harry paused in turn. "Talked to him? Or at him?"  
  
"The first at first," Draco said. "The second later, when he started listening to my mother and realized what he did."  
  
Harry sighed and did feel some of his anger leave. Just knowing that Lucius had some consequences to his behavior that weren't death, unlike the goblins never having consequences at all, reassured him. "All right. I'll come in and eat. I just don't want him to ever say something like that again."  
  
Draco had an odd little smirk on his face as he stood. "I think you'll find that he won't have the opportunity."  
  
Harry didn't know what he meant until he got into the breakfast room and heard Narcissa's casual words. "Oh, Harry, I thought you should know that Lucius has decided that it would do him good to sort the artifacts and money by himself. For the rest of the day. In another room."  
  
Harry smiled until it felt as if his face would break, and then settled into his usual chair at the table and went on eating as if nothing was wrong. Draco touched his hand, and then nothing was.  
  



	24. Call Out the Vengeance

Draco lay awake, frowning into the distance. No matter how many hours went by, or how many old tricks—like counting the dragons carved into the panels and hidden corners of his room—he used to try and fall asleep, he was still awake.   
  
He thought he  _shouldn’t_ sleep. There was something out there, something that might take his resting his eyes as permission, and come for him…  
  
Draco shook his head and rolled over for the millionth time, letting his head thump onto the pillow. Then he called a house-elf and had it plump up the pillows for him, watching the gleam of its wide green eyes in the dark.  
  
“There’s nothing wrong in or around the house, is there, Memer?” he asked.  
  
The house-elf looked at him and twitched her head. “Is being quiet. Master Draco is  _sleeping_ ,” Memer whispered, the way she had when he was small, and she vanished with a pop that would have destroyed sleep if he’d achieved it. Draco snorted and closed his eyes. Then again, there was a reason that most people didn’t call house-elves when they were on the verge of sleep.  
  
Gradually, the pounding of shadows in his head lulled him towards sleep. If there was something wrong, the house-elves or the wards would have taken care of it, he knew. No use worrying about it now. He sighed, and let his breathing wash him even further towards the dark shore he was seeking.  
  
He was there, he thought later, or he might have got there. But a horny hand on his shoulder yanked him rather abruptly out of sleep.  
  
His first thought was that Memer had come back with a warning, and Draco turned over, grabbing his wand and with a sharp word on his lips. He might order Memer to punish herself, as long as Harry and Granger never found out about it.  
  
But the face behind him was grey, not green, and the grin it gave him was more terrifying than anything else could be. Draco found his fingers numb on the wand, and it dropped to the floor as the goblin dragged him out of bed and pressed him close to its chest in an obscene parody of a hug.  
  
“Draco Malfoy is secured,” said the goblin into something small that hung around its neck, what looked like a stone amulet on a chain, and then held a potion up to Draco’s mouth.  
  
Draco finally kicked and fought, and all the harder when he tasted one corner of the viscous potion and knew what it was. Thick and cold like that, it would make  _him_  thick and cold, and there was no way he knew of waking on his own. The goblins wouldn’t even have to dose him again for months. He didn’t like the implications, and he tried to drum the goblin’s ears, to pound its skull in, to scratch its eyes out.  
  
But his parents had always taught him to depend on his magic, and even to despise Muggle ways of fighting. Long before Draco was ready to do so, he felt his struggles weaken and stop, and the last sensation he had was of his head falling on a bony shoulder that didn’t make a comfortable pillow.   
  
He was too frightened, in those last moments of consciousness, to appreciate the fact that he had sleep at last.  
  
*  
  
“Master Harry! Master Harry Potter!”  
  
Harry shot to his feet and out of the bed, ending up almost on the other side of the room. He shook his head roughly and turned around, doing what he could to control the magic that leaped and danced on his fingertips. He didn’t want to kill a house-elf, even more than he didn’t want to damage the fine sheets or the wood in his room. “What is it?” he asked, leaning into the waterfall. There was little he could do to that.  
  
A house-elf he didn’t recognize stood wringing its hands in the middle of the room, immense tears in its eyes. “Master Harry Potter is coming at once! Master Draco Malfoy is taken!”  
  
Harry felt as if he had turned to steel. There was sharpness and clarity in his mind, and his gestures were mechanical as he nodded and asked, “Who’s taken him?” His fingers could have cut if he’d touched something.  
  
“Memer is not being sure!” the house-elf wailed, and wrung its hands harder. “Only that Master Draco Malfoy is being here one moment and gone the next, and Memer is not sure, but Memer thinks it was…” The elf sniffled.  
  
“Louder, Memer, please,” said Harry, and bent down so he was on the same level as the elf, so that he wouldn’t miss a word if the elf spoke it.  
  
“Goblins!” the elf cried then, and fell at Harry’s feet as if expected to be struck dead by the magic that yawned around Harry.  
  
It was a blue vortex, a whirlwind that made the walls glow, and it was a long moment before Harry could wrestle it back under control and ask the next question that mattered. “How did they get past the wards?”  
  
“Memer is not knowing.” The elf sniffled and wiped its eyes, standing back up again. “Memer is only knowing that they were there, and then they were gone, and Master Draco Malfoy is gone with them.”  
  
Harry nodded slowly. He supposed he ought to have thought about this. The goblins would want revenge on him even if they didn’t know about the con the Malfoys were running, because they knew he was part of the reason that Lucius had withdrawn his wealth from Gringotts. And there was nothing the goblins reacted to more violently than the threat of treasure loss.  
  
His mind was a whirl of steel lights in the middle of a case of steel. He knew he should wait, let people know where he was going, wait for help and backup and maybe someone the goblins would be inclined to listen to. Maybe Narcissa could negotiate with them for the return of her son.  
  
But Harry didn’t really believe that. And while he would leave a message for his friends and the Malfoys, there was no question but that he was going now.  
  
“You need to tell Narcissa and Lucius that I’ve gone to Gringotts to rescue Draco,” he told the house-elf. “All right? I’m sure that’s where they’ve taken him.”  
  
The elf moaned a little and stared at him with wide eyes. “Master Harry Potter is being so brave!” it cried, in tones loud enough that Harry winced. Then its head drooped, and it looked as if it might crawl on the ground again. “But Master Lucius and Mistress Narcissa are being  _so_ angry.”  
  
“I don’t want you to punish yourself, all right?” Harry asked. His heart was pounding and thudding, and his thoughts were a long way away, hovering near Draco, wherever he was. Maybe the goblins hadn’t reached Gringotts yet. He could hope. “No matter how angry they get, this wasn’t your fault.”  
  
The elf just gaped at him. Harry shook his head. He was through trying to reassure people and help those left behind. There was only one person who really needed his help right now, and Harry was going to go give it.  
  
He grabbed his wand and Invisibility Cloak. If the goblins hadn’t reached Gringotts yet and Harry went there and waited for them, there was the chance he could sneak in behind them without being seen. The Cloak was one of the Deathly Hallows, it might protect him.   
  
But he knew as well as the elf had that he wasn’t going to be relying on objects for most of his threat to the goblins.  
  
Once again, the blue magic dazzled around him, and Harry gave a grim smile. He sort of  _hoped_ that the goblins had reached Gringotts already, actually.  
  
It was time to show them that they’d pay for what they’d done.  
  
*  
  
Narcissa woke in one of those fast transitions from sleep to full alertness that had been necessary during the war. She wondered for a moment why it was necessary this time. There was no longer a Dark Lord to call her out and punish her for the sins of her husband or other followers, and the reason why was sleeping safely in one of the rooms below.  
  
But then she saw the bowing house-elf at the end of the bed, and understood. When they were disturbed or agitated enough, elves could cause changes in the emotional atmosphere of a room. Normally, Lucius would feel it first, since he was linked to the house’s elves by blood and Narcissa only by marriage, but he had always been a heavy sleeper. He was only stirring now.  
  
Drawing her robes close around her and picking up her wand, ready to Transfigure them if she needed to move, Narcissa asked, “What is amiss?”  
  
“Goblins were coming through the wards and taking Master Draco, Mistress,” said the elf, a trustworthy one Narcissa recognized after a moment as Memer. “Master Harry Potter is be going to rescue him.”  
  
For a moment, Narcissa closed her eyes. The fear was cold, soaking, as though someone had buried her in the mud at the bottom of an icy lake.  
  
Then she pushed that moment away. There would be time for fear later, if Harry didn’t succeed in getting Draco back or if Narcissa was confronted with his body. Right now, there were other things to do.  
  
Lucius had sat up by now, and had heard enough that he didn’t require the house-elf to repeat everything, but he did demand incredulously, “What does the Potter boy think he’s up to?”  
  
“I thought you had had enough reminders by now not to consider him a child,” said Narcissa, and swung her legs out of bed. A thought and an easy motion of her wand had her robes Transfigured into battle-robes, the heavier and spell-protected ones that were one of the few good innovations the Death Eaters had come up with. “I am going.”  
  
“We don’t know where Potter went running off to,” Lucius protested, reaching for his own wand. He was more powerful at Charms than she was, but he had never been able to Transfigure objects as fast.  
  
Narcissa shot an impatient spell at him and Transfigured the robes for him, then shook her head. “He went to the place they are most likely to have taken Draco, of course. Gringotts. They’ll think they can hold him behind impenetrable wards there.”  
  
“I thought  _our_ wards were impenetrable.” Lucius was still unwinding the sheets from around his waist, but at least his tone was alert now. “What happened?”  
  
“Memer is not knowing,” said the house-elf, bowing and pulling on her ears. “But Master Harry Potter is saying that it is not important. He is leaving the message with Memer and telling her not to be punishing herself.”  
  
Narcissa nodded briskly. That had been a good idea on Potter’s part, since sometimes elves couldn’t give messages because they were so busy mangling their ears or hands or whatever body part they thought they should hurt. “Then we will divide our labor. Stay here, Lucius, and guard the house. The goblins might try to come back and get their hands on the wealth we removed. I’ll go join Harry and Draco.”  
  
Lucius gave her an appalled look. “You don’t think I care more about my son than about my valuables?”  
  
Narcissa leaned across the bed to give him a quick kiss. “I know you do. But I also think that your battle style is more well-known than mine, and I can give the goblins some surprises that they won’t even think of.”  
  
Lucius grumbled once more, but nodded in apparent acceptance. Narcissa smiled, relieved. It would be hard enough to deal with her own emotions as she was going after her son; dealing with Lucius’s at the same time would make the rescue far more difficult than it needed to be.  
  
And in the meantime…  
  
 _I am coming,_ Narcissa thought to her son and son-in-law, and diverted her path only enough to pick up a bloodline artifact she might need before she left the house.  
  
*  
  
Harry arrived at the facade of Gringotts and stood still for a moment, his head turning back and forth. He couldn’t feel any recent expenditure of spells or see any scorch marks, the way he thought he would if Draco had been fighting when the goblins tried to get him in, but on the other hand, they might have Draco bound and unable to fight.  
  
Then there was a noise from behind him, and Harry turned around, carefully concealed under the Invisibility Cloak.  
  
A flying carpet was landing gently on the street in front of the bank, with no more noise than a swish of cloth. Five goblins stepped off it, hooded figures in folded robes that seemed to be made of a single piece of fabric, and hastily lifted a still figure with white-blond hair off the carpet.  
  
 _Or they might have drugged him into unconsciousness,_ Harry thought, and his anger burned as he lifted one hand and pushed the Cloak back.  
  
The goblins turned around, lugging Draco with a strength surprising for their sizes, and then froze when they saw Harry’s one hand hovering in apparent midair. A blue flame burned on the edge of Harry’s fingers, his magic coiled and ready. At the moment, it felt like nothing would be easier than to destroy either a stone building or living flesh.  
  
“You have no idea who you’re dealing with,” Harry whispered, and pushed the Cloak’s hood back so the goblins could see his head. “Release him to me.”  
  
For a moment only, the goblins continued staring, and then they exchanged toothy grins. One of them moved forwards, shaking his head. He was a goblin with brick-red skin and eyes, and he looked at Harry as though he was appreciating a conjuring trick.  
  
“Most of my people thought you were a helpless slave,” he croaked. “Not me. I never thought that.”  
  
“Aren’t you glad that you didn’t try to enslave me, then?” Harry kept his voice mild, and only tilted his hand so that the blue fire aimed at the red goblin. “Let my friend go.”  
  
“That would do little good,” said the goblin, glancing at the blue fire but not retreating. Maybe he didn’t know what it was. “He is under a strong potion, and you have no idea what the antidote is or where to get it.” He smiled pleasantly at Harry.  
  
“You will fetch it,” said Harry.  
  
“I begin to find your assurance when you stand upon our threshold tiresome,” said the goblin. “But you can have him for the right price, as with any trade. Let it not be said that we are unfair.” He gave Harry another smile. “Become our slave, and convince Lucius Malfoy to return his wealth to our keeping. That is the only price we will accept.”  
  
Harry thought he would have considered it, a few weeks ago. A few months ago, before the Malfoys took him in. Before he started thinking of himself as someone who had already done great things and deserved a bit of consideration.  
  
But now, he didn’t give a fuck about the goblins’ price.   
  
“Perhaps that would be acceptable if I was still the same boy you wanted to enslave,” he responded, and started walking slowly forwards. The goblins tracked his movement with narrowed eyes, although the brick-red one still didn't back away. “But I’m beyond that now. I’ll give you another price. You surrender Draco to me, and I don’t destroy your bank.”  
  
“Ah, yes, the magic of rage,” said the red-skinned goblin, with another complicated bob of his head. “You think that what we chose to ignore is significant. Destroying us will not bring your friend back, or retain the antidote.”  
  
Harry smiled. “I don’t need to destroy  _you_.”  
  
He whipped his Cloak back over his head, and saw the goblins scrambling to try and adjust, to figure out where he was. Harry made sure that his footsteps were silent as he glided back across the flagstones separating him from the bank and touched one of the marble walls.  
  
It wasn’t an effort to focus the rage and hatred towards the goblins that he had felt since Apparating here. The hardest thing was controlling it, and making sure that the goblins saw only a crack spreading up through the stone, instead of the immediate crumbling effect that he  _wanted_.  
  
Two of the goblins cried out, and let Draco’s legs fall to the ground as they rushed forwards. The lead goblin shouted something at them, but Harry turned around and held out his hand, once again free of the Cloak and visible.  
  
“If you come nearer, I can do the same thing to you,” he warned them.  
  
The goblins halted at once. The red one marched towards him, his head up and his yellow eyes shining wickedly above wrinkled lips. Harry could see fangs under the edges of those lips.  
  
“You have no idea what disturbance of the political balance you are causing,” the goblin whispered.  
  
“You’re right, I don’t,” said Harry. “And I don’t give a fuck. I want my friend back, and the antidote. Do that, and your bank is spared. I don’t care enough to keep hunting vengeance once I have him back.”  
  
The goblin was trembling in what looked like rage. Harry continued to watch him, impassively. It wouldn’t matter to him if the goblin expired of his emotions.  
  
“We will claim our price from the wizarding public, then,” the red goblin murmured. “From the money that you own in your vaults, and the Black fortune. We will take that away, and it will vanish once again into our walls and never emerge.”  
  
Harry laughed, and it was a high-pitched and eerie sound even to him, one he hadn’t known he was going to make before he made it. “Do I look like I care? The wizarding world abandoned me. Let them suffer for not protecting me.”  
  
The red goblin glared at him and parted his lips enough to reveal most of the passage down his throat. “And your money? How will you live without it?”  
  
“I already wasn’t going to get to use it for the next year, if you’d made me a slave.” Harry shook his head, smiling. He felt light and free, as if the literal weight of a vault of money had been lifted off his back. “But go on. Take it. I have other means of existing. And I’d trade the whole Black fortune for the chance to see Sirius again.”  
  
He glanced at Draco, and a sweet ache went through him, a little similar to what he’d felt when he lost Sirius. At least this time, the person he loved was still alive.  
  
 _Loved._ Draco would celebrate when he heard that.  
  
“You would destroy the bank and all the money in it?” The red goblin was tilting his head slowly up and down, as though Harry’s priorities would make more sense when looked at from another angle.  
  
“Yes,” said Harry. “I don’t care about it. I want Draco.” He held up his hand and leaned it on another place in the wall, this time envisioning a sort of accelerated decay. Spots of grey and green and black like mold began to spread across the marble, and the goblins moaned like a strong wind. “Are you going to give him to me? Along with the antidote?”  
  
“This is extraordinary,” said the red goblin. He made a little clutching motion with one hand in the air, that made Harry tense. He didn’t know what it meant, and he was afraid the goblin might be signalling that he wanted someone to use a spell on Harry. But nothing happened, except the red one peering even more intently at him. “You’d give us your money?”  
  
“Surrender it,” Harry corrected tensely.  
  
“What about the living descendents of the Blacks?” The red goblin nodded at Draco, hanging helplessly in the arms of the goblins who weren’t staring at the ruined part of the bank. “They might oppose your surrender of the fortune.”  
  
Harry laughed sharply. “What kind of legal nonsense  _is_ this? Do you want to see what else I can do?” He started to close his eyes. He didn’t have the ritual equipment to set up on of those circles he and Draco had practiced with, but he thought he might be able to affect some of the money in the bank anyway. He was close, and he was pretty angry.  
  
“Do not!” The red goblin raised his voice enough to disrupt Harry’s concentration, and he opened his eyes with a snarl. The goblin waved his arms. “If you surrender the gold in three vaults to us, we will leave you alone and give you your friend and the antidote.”  
  
Harry paused. “What about the vaults themselves?”  
  
The goblins all turned their heads and looked at him as one. Harry saw the same gleam in their eyes that had been there when Lucius talked about surrendering one of the Malfoy vaults. And he remembered why that had been Lucius’s preferred tactic to pay back a life-debt. The space itself under the bank was valued by the goblins.  
  
“You would give us the vaults?” The red goblin looked rapturous.  
  
“Surrender,” Harry corrected. “Trade.” He gave the goblins a tense smile. “That’s something you ought to understand.”  
  
“The vaults of the Black fortune, and the fortune itself,” said the red goblin.  
  
“The Black vaults and the money and vault space in the one that my parents left me,” Harry countered instantly. “The fortune itself returns to the Black heirs.” He stifled the urge to laugh. He wondered if Draco would be disappointed that he was bargaining with the goblins instead of destroying them, but he had to admit he wanted this ended, this futile contest between him and the goblins. At least this would keep them from demanding any more vengeance, and free Harry and Draco of the need for some of their pretenses. Harry wanted to be free to love Draco more than he wanted the goblins dead or penniless.  
  
“In exchange for what?”  
  
“The payment of the debt you think I owe you,” Harry said. “And my friend and the antidote. No more talk of slavery and no more efforts at vengeance on the Malfoys.”  
  
The red goblin turned his head back and forth as though consulting with invisible advisors on either side of him. Then he turned to Harry and croaked, “Done,” and the others scurried forwards to deposit Draco at Harry’s feet. One of them put down a thick green bottle of some kind of black liquid at Harry’s feet, too.  
  
“A pleasure doing business with you, Mr. Potter,” said the red goblin, and he probably meant it. Goblins valued different things than humans, and just like they had been angry enough about Harry’s break-in to the bank to threaten to sink the wizarding economy, they were satisfied enough by what he’d given up to back away now.  
  
“Well. Perhaps you did not need me after all, Harry.”  
  
Harry started and looked up. Narcissa was standing in front of him. She gave him a faint smile and crouched down, using her wand to cast a complicated-looking spell on Draco that made his belly and some of his veins light up and turn blue. A second later, she nodded.  
  
“He’s under a certain kind of potion that causes unconsciousness for weeks. But this is the antidote if it smells of cinnamon.” She picked up the potion and carefully smelt it, then smiled. “It does.”  
  
Tentatively, Harry smiled back. Narcissa laid a hand on his shoulder for a moment.  
  
“You’ve done well,” she said, and then she turned and poured the antidote down Draco’s throat while Harry supported his head.  
  
There was a long moment when Harry thought it wouldn’t work, but then Narcissa massaged Draco’s throat briskly and he swallowed. Draco opened his eyes, blinked, stared around, and muttered, “What? Where are the goblins?”  
  
“Your mother’s here, and I’m here,” Harry said, laying a hand on Draco’s shoulder. More detailed explanations could wait for later.  
  
Draco gave him an extraordinarily sweet smile. “Of course. I knew you would come for me.”  
  
And Harry bent down and kissed him, unable at that moment to do anything else, or imagine any other way that he’d want to respond. 


	25. Settling One Matter

“I still can’t believe that you gave up a fortune just like that.”  
  
Harry shook his head. He and Draco were in Draco’s room, although Harry had offered to bring Draco to his own bed. Draco had wanted to recover on his own sheets and pillows, though. He said they were softer. Harry wasn’t in the mood to deny him.  
  
But he would feel better himself if Draco gave up the impulse to moan that Harry had lost a whole fortune by giving up the Potter vault he had used during school.  
  
“Listen,” he said quietly, leaning near so that Draco, who kept turning his head restlessly as if he had a fever, had to focus on him. “You’re acting as though I surrendered a huge amount of money. I didn’t. I know it, and the goblins know it. I wish you could accept the same thing.”  
  
Draco stopped turning and stared at him. Harry didn’t nod, because he knew better, but he was quietly pleased. Yes, that had been a good tactic. Draco really was upset because of the money he thought Harry had sacrificed, not because the goblin potion had lingering side-effects. Of course, that didn’t lessen Harry’s desire to stay with him.  
  
“But you had a lot of money in that Potter vault,” said Draco. “You gave up everything for me.”  
  
“No,” said Harry. “I mean, I wouldn’t have been displeased if that was the price I had to pay to get you back and remain free from goblin vengeance, but it really wasn’t.”  
  
Draco gave him another skeptical scowl. Harry nodded encouragingly, and finally Draco said, “I’m listening.”  
  
“I told them that I’d give them the money and space in the vault I used  _during school_ ,” said Harry. “That was the only one I knew about at the time. I did learn immediately after the war that there are some vaults I never touched. One of them was one my mum set up before she married my father, so it’s under the Evans name. And there are two others full of artifacts that I didn’t care that much about because I never saw a need to use artifacts.”  
  
Draco opened his mouth, then closed it. “But there can’t be as much money in those as there was in the original.”  
  
Harry shrugged. “That vault was only established by my parents to get me through school. It was never enough to live on permanently. I don’t know how much it had left in it, but it was nowhere near the amount of money the goblins are going to send here when they clean out the Black vaults.”  
  
“So you’re not  _absolutely_ poor,” Draco said, eyeing him as closely as if he thought this was some sort of trick and Harry was going to break out sobbing and confess that he needed the support of the Malfoy family to get through life after all.  
  
“No,” said Harry, with a grin. “Not as rich as I was, but I wouldn’t have had access to that money for the next year anyway.” He took Draco’s hand. “And just think. The goblins were the ones that we had to hide my freedom from, and the ones that we made a deal with. That means that we  _don’t_ have to hide from the rest of the wizarding world.”  
  
A painful hope crept into Draco’s eyes. Harry leaned over and kissed him in response. He hadn’t realized how much their deception of everyone else was costing Draco, though he really should have.  
  
“I didn’t think of that,” said Draco. “And you’re really content to sacrifice money and vaults to get that?”  
  
“Yes,” said Harry firmly. “ _If_ I stay in the wizarding world—and I can’t make a promise yet—”  
  
Some of the hope was snuffed in Draco’s eyes, but he nodded to indicate he understood and gestured for Harry to go on.  
  
“I want to stay on the terms we originally talked about,” Harry said. “Where I could use my magic to frighten people and scare them away if I had to, but where people didn’t think I was your slave and had to be controlled by you.”  
  
“But we already started the lie,” Draco murmured. “That means that there’s always going to be some people who believe it no matter what retractions we offer.”  
  
Harry shrugged. He couldn’t believe that was the part that was disconcerting Draco, but clearly they would have to talk a little more before they got to the part that really was. “That’s fine. That’s the same kind of shit they always believe about me. There’s still people out there who think I’m going to marry Ginny, or that I was secretly dating Hermione during fourth year, or that I’m the next Dark Lord. It’s not worth the struggle to change their minds. What I want is for  _most_ people to accept that we were lying to them to get my freedom from the goblins and that this is the way I want to live for now.”  
  
“You,” said Draco, and shook his head again. “So we’ll just admit that we lied? And that will have no consequences?”  
  
Harry laughed, and delighted in both the way Draco’s eyes widened and the way he half-tilted his head, as though he didn’t know what was going on but liked it. “What consequences? There can’t be legal ones. We’ve settled everything with the goblins, and they won’t take any other action against us. Everyone except my friends and your family was content to step back and leave me to the tender mercies of the goblins when they thought I’d be  _their_ slave for a year. Objecting now might make them look stupid and cause us some trouble, but it can’t bring us any permanent problems.” He reached out and squeezed Draco’s hand. “I love you, and I want to live with you openly. That’s what I really paid the goblins for. Your freedom, and mine.”  
  
“You  _love_ me?”  
  
Harry paused. He supposed he hadn’t said that to Draco before, or not in such a way that he understood it beyond all doubt.  
  
But unlike his decision to stay in the wizarding world, he had no reason to delay this expression of his desire for Draco, and he smiled and leaned forwards until his head was right above Draco’s. Draco tilted his head further back, an absurdly vulnerable position, but his eyes were the most powerful things in the world to Harry right then.  
  
“Yes,” Harry whispered, and kissed him.  
  
Draco didn’t act feverish or weak or like he was having side-effects of the potion when he hauled Harry into bed with him, or when he started scrabbling at Harry’s robes. Harry chuckled and helped Draco get them off, then the simple shirt and pants that had been all Draco wanted to wear for pyjamas after they got him back into bed.  
  
Naked, Draco was a lot paler than Harry had thought he would be, even after years of looking at his pale face, and he worried for a second that this could be another side-effect of the potion Narcissa hadn’t told him about. But unless it also made someone really want sex, he thought as Draco knocked him to his back and climbed on top of him, then it probably wasn’t. Harry kicked his legs open and groaned when Draco reached down, slipping his fingers into place around Harry’s cock as if they had always been there.  
  
They hadn’t. They wouldn’t have been, if not for such a strange and unusual combination of circumstances that Harry would have laughed if someone had tried to prophesize it for him.  
  
But maybe he was finally free of prophecies, and he could live his life by chance and coincidence just like anyone else.  
  
 _And choice,_ Harry thought. Right now, his choice was to fuck up into Draco’s fist, and then to reach up and try to get his hand around Draco’s cock at the same time. Draco was straddling his lap in a way that made it difficult.  
  
Draco shifted to the side a second later, and gave Harry a beaming smile that Harry had to return, although it didn’t feel as if his had as many teeth or as much lust behind it. Probably  _nothing_ could have more lust behind it than Draco’s smile. “No,” Draco whispered. “I don’t want to do that. We already did that.”  
  
It made Harry blink, but he recognized a second later what Draco was talking about. He nodded and said, “All right, then. What do you want to do now?”  
  
Draco sat back and gave him a leisurely survey. A second later, he leered, and Harry felt as though every inch of his exposed skin was blushing. Well, he was naked and in front of his lover for the first time. That was allowed.  
  
“I want to fuck you,” said Draco. “Really, really hard.”  
  
Harry felt his mouth fall open a little, and while he was stirring below his waist, he didn’t know what to say. Draco promptly eyed him and chewed on his lip, and added in a lower voice, “If that’s—if you want it.”  
  
“It’s hard to convey how much I want it,” said Harry, and kissed Draco in a way that he hoped would leave his lips permanently imprinted on Draco’s. Then he pushed Draco a little off him, because that smug expression of his couldn’t continue, and looked around. “What do we—use for this?” He knew they had to use something, that Draco wouldn’t just fit inside him, but it wasn’t like he’d had the time to do lots of research or fantasizing.  
  
“Fetch me my wand,” said Draco, waving one hand languidly, “and I’ll show you.”  
  
Just for that, Harry concentrated and made a burst of his own wandless magic blow Draco’s wand across the bed to him instead of using his own to cast the Summoning Charm. Draco watched him with eyes driven dark by lust, and only cast the spell he needed when Harry waggled an impatient eyebrow.  
  
The stuff he had was orange and smelled sweet. Harry sniffed. “Is that stuff safe to use—you know, inside someone?”  
  
“I’ll have you know that it’s the  _stuff_ I’ve used to clean myself for years,” said Draco, and put his nose up. “Inside and out.”  
  
Harry murmured an apology and watched intently as Draco wiped it carefully along his cock. It did seem to be thinner than he’d thought it would be, instead of a creamy gel that wouldn’t ease the pain much. It became nearly transparent as Draco smoothed himself up and down, and then he opened his fluttering eyes and focused on Harry.  
  
“Your turn,” he said, his voice coming from a deep place in his chest that made Harry squirm.  
  
Harry lay back and opened his legs. He thought that was what he needed to do, but Draco lingered, staring, for long seconds, and Harry finally coughed and asked, “Draco?”  
  
“Right!” Draco all but blurted, his eyes rising to lock on Harry’s. Harry hid a smile and nodded, his legs opening further. Draco leaned in and began to circle a finger slowly around Harry’s entrance.  
  
Harry thought about telling him that he didn’t need that, but it turned out that the motion soothed and relaxed him. Soon he was letting his legs fall open through sheer languor rather than because he had to. Draco smiled and said something under his breath that made his wand glow. Harry thought it made the gel even thinner and coated Draco’s finger with a thick, shimmering layer of oil.  
  
Harry wriggled a little, invitingly.  
  
Draco met his gaze and held it as he eased a finger into Harry, moving slowly but not so slowly that Harry couldn’t see the fluttering of his breath and the brightness of his eyes. Harry had to grimace, and the minute he did, Draco reached out and petted his hip.  
  
“I’m all right,” Harry said.  
  
“And you sound so convincing, muttering that between gritted teeth,” Draco said lightly, but then his face turned serious. “No, Harry, it’s all right. We can afford to go slowly. I want to, to make it pleasant for you, too. After all—” He hesitated for one moment. “I love you, too.”  
  
Harry felt as if a sunrise was taking place in his chest. He raised one hand from the bed and clasped the hand that Draco had on his hip. Draco bent over and kissed him, and Harry sighed and turned to the side.  
  
“This may be easier with you on your knees,” Draco whispered, sliding a second finger inside.  
  
Harry thought about it, and nodded. He wanted to enjoy himself not only for his own sake but Draco’s, after what Draco had whispered to him, and anything that made it easier was good to hear. With Draco’s help, he got in the right position, on his knees and with his hands comfortably braced on the bed. He let his head hang down and looked at Draco between his knees, catching his eye and winking.  
  
“Go on with you,” Draco muttered, and put in a third finger.  
  
It took a long time for Harry to adjust to that, and longer for the fourth. But at last he was gasping more with eagerness for Draco than with pain, and he heard Draco rise to his own knees behind him.  
  
The entrance was slow, painful, and heavy. Harry opened his mouth and panted around the pulse of it. He hadn’t known he could survive having something like that inside him. It reminded him of the first meals he had eaten after coming to Hogwarts, when he had never known that he could be that full.  
  
A second later, he smiled. Yes, indeed, he had never known. But that had been a wonderful experience, in a new place where he could be free of the troubles and taints of his childhood. And this was going to be the same way.  
  
He was determined. He wouldn’t let it be anything less.  
  
*  
  
Being inside of Harry was deeply  _satisfying_.  
  
Draco could think of it other ways, of course. He could think of it as warm, and tight, and all-encompassing, and likely to drive him out of his mind with pleasure. But satisfying was really the best way to think of it.  
  
He dug his fingers into Harry’s hips for the pleasure of watching his skin wrinkle and bruise under Draco’s touch, and he rocked because he wanted to listen to Harry gasp, as well as be further inside him. Knowing that he was there, and Harry was there, and they were locked together, made his heart want to explode.  
  
Since he couldn’t do that without dying, he did the next best thing, and set about making them both explode instead.  
  
Harry began to grunt beneath Draco, quiet sounds that never rose any higher than they began with. Draco had wanted to make him scream, but he thought this noise might be better, since it was so distinctly Harry.  
  
Draco locked his hands into place again and leaned forwards, making Harry nearly collapse to the bed. When Draco went on fucking him, Harry panted and said something incomprehensible, given that his mouth was open and his tongue was hanging out.  
  
“I’m sorry, I can’t hear you,” Draco said—also taking more time to force the words out than he would have liked—and then began to fuck Harry hard enough that Harry was swearing and sounding winded in a few seconds.  
  
It couldn’t last after that, and it didn’t. But the pleasure that began as a spiral in Draco’s chest, spreading lazily down to his groin, was more than matched by the way that Harry moaned out beneath him and began to come. Draco was smug about that for the smallest of moments, that he was the one who had made Harry do that.  
  
He felt the tremors that raced through Harry from inside—the most intimate place, the place he would have wanted to be years ago if he had  _understood_ them both the way he did now—and he succumbed to his own orgasm with a soft cry. Harry was grunting again, and he reached a hand back and touched the middle of Draco’s back.   
  
Draco valued that, even though Harry doing that also unbalanced them and made him collapse to the bed. It was enough to tell him that Harry was utterly in love with him and utterly uncaring about little things like balance.  
  
He finished with a quiver, and pulled free before he could do something silly like fall asleep inside Harry. From the grunt Harry made, he regarded Draco slipping out as a loss, and might not have been unhappy about that.  
  
Draco panted too hard to say anything for a moment, and then he reached out and ran his hand down Harry’s forehead and said, “I told you the gel would work.”  
  
Harry opened his mouth and produced the strangest sound, somewhere between a laugh and a yawn. “I won’t doubt you again,” he said, when he had words back.  
  
“Don’t,” Draco said. “Not about things that concern your happiness.” And he leaned over and kissed Harry, making Harry grunt and smile and close his eyes in exhaustion.  
  
Draco cleaned them up and managed to put his wand out of the way and draw the sheets over them. That was honestly the last thing he remembered.  
  
Well, that and the warmth of Harry’s steadily rising and falling chest beneath his hand.


	26. All the Tricks

“I think that’s the last of it,” Harry said, as he took delivery of a delicate crystal vial with something deep green and liquid floating in it from one of the owls. “Maybe not,” he added, as another line of owls came flying over the gates of the Manor.  
  
“What  _are_ half these things?” Draco was peering at the chests and trunks and scrolls and books and ledgers and mirrors and scepters and wands and portraits and general dust-covered paraphernalia on the grass with astonishment.  
  
“If you recognize even half, you’re doing better than me,” Harry told him wryly, and then had to duck as an owl carrying a small oval package tried to land on top of his head. “Perches are over there, wait your turn.”  
  
The owl gave him a chill look, but turned to the perches. Harry snorted a little. Goblin owls didn’t like him any better than the goblins themselves.  
  
“This is your heritage, dears.”  
  
Harry turned around, blinking. He had thought Draco’s parents were still asleep, but maybe that had only lasted until the delivery of the Black vaults’ contents began. Narcissa stood in the middle of the front doors, her eyes half-closed, her nostrils vibrating as if she was sniffing up a delicious scent.  
  
 _Well, she was born a Black,_ Harry remembered a moment later.  _To her, there probably_ are  _lots of familiar things here._  
  
Narcissa ran lightly down the steps and held up a hand. The owl that had tried to land on Harry’s head swooped over to her and landed on her arm. It was a handsome black bird with silver edges to its feathers, without the least resemblance to Hedwig, and Harry would have liked it fine if not for it deciding that his head was a reasonable perch. Narcissa took the package from it, and the owl was gone a moment later, flying with determination towards the trees over which yet more owls soared.  
  
There was a long moment when Narcissa undid the gilded wrapping of the package with exquisite care—Harry never could have unwrapped it like that, his fingers were too clumsy without a wand or a Snitch in them—and then she drew her head back and gave a long, satisfied sigh. “Yes, I thought so.” She turned towards them with a smile. “Come here, Draco. You should see this. You too, Harry.”  
  
Harry walked over willingly enough. He considered Draco and Narcissa the rightful owners of most of these things, anyway; while he would like to keep some of it in memory of Sirius, Sirius had never got to use these vaults when he was alive, and had probably hated a lot of things his family treasured. They should go to someone who would appreciate them.  
  
The thing Narcissa held would have made it hard for Harry to decide if he wanted to keep it or not, though. It looked like a flat, square box, sort of like the plastic boxes that Muggles kept to store food in. Inside was what looked like honey at first, and then it shifted as Narcissa tenderly lifted the lid and Harry saw a glimmering red color to its general gold.  
  
“What is it?” Draco asked, making Harry feel better about the questions bubbling up in his throat that he’d thought were stupid.  
  
“The possible answer to a dilemma that your father has spent more time and thought on than I have,” said Narcissa. “This is Finder’s Blood Honey. It happens, of course, that there are times a couple cannot conceive an heir.”  
  
She gave Draco and Harry a knowing look. Draco’s face turned almost as dark as the owl’s feathers. Harry just rolled his eyes. He had never fooled himself that Narcissa, at least, didn’t know what was going on between him and Draco. For that matter, Lucius probably did, too, he just didn’t think that much about it.  
  
“This honey, if consumed by both members of the couple at the same time, allows them to find a child who can become an heir. If enough is taken, and the honey is old enough, it can work even on the unborn, and let them find a child currently in the womb that will fit their line’s artifacts in personality.” Narcissa’s hand smoothed reverently over the top of the box. “If we hadn’t had you, Draco, I would have found a way to remove this from the Black vaults so we could go searching for an heir early on.”  
  
Draco blinked rapidly and looked at the honey with an entirely new light in his eyes. Harry cocked his head. He wouldn’t mind having children, although he wouldn’t want to cheat on his current partner to do so. He just hoped that Draco would think of their child as a child first and an heir second.  
  
 _If I stay here. If I’m even Draco’s partner by the time the question of children becomes relevant._  
  
But Harry knew this was the wrong time to bring up his uncertainty about staying in the wizarding world. So he waited as Narcissa stared at the honey for some time with mist in her eyes, and then carefully closed the box.  
  
He was utterly stunned when she handed it to him, though, and had to juggle it to make sure he didn’t drop it. Narcissa raised an eyebrow and murmured, “It’s not like you to be clumsy, Harry,” and she was the woman he knew again, which helped Harry steady his hands.  
  
“I—look, I’d like a child, too,” said Harry a little awkwardly, and looked at her instead of Draco. “But I don’t know if I’m the right one to have custody of this. You’re both Blacks by blood.” He stepped back so he was looking at Draco. “You should have it.”  
  
“Cousin Sirius made you his heir,” said Narcissa, and now there was a faint smile dancing on her mouth. “The goblins accepted his will. Far be it from me to contest something that  _goblins_ have decided.”  
  
That was such shit that Harry was afraid he was going to say something intemperate in a moment. Instead, he stared at her flatly for the same moment, and then shook his head and turned to Draco.  
  
“You think that this is a good idea?” he asked, and he wasn’t even sure what exactly he was asking about, the box or the honey or the fact that Narcissa had given it to him. Or maybe Narcissa’s outrageous pronouncement.  
  
Draco looked at him, and there was a soft light in his eyes and around his mouth that Harry had last seen after they made love. “I think that it’s a good idea for you to consider a lot of these things yours,” he said. “We’re only storing them in our house and sharing them at all because you chose to share them. You could have given them up to the goblins, and we wouldn’t have had any say in that.”  
  
“I couldn’t do that,” Harry responded, a little disturbed that Draco would think he could. “Sirius left them to me, and I don’t really want them for themselves, but I couldn’t dishonor his memory like that.”  
  
“He left them to  _you_ ,” said Draco, and his smile was the twin of Narcissa’s.  
  
 _Like mother, like son,_ Harry thought incredulously, and didn’t throw the box at Draco only because he agreed with Narcissa that it was precious. He thought they might have different evaluations of the reason why, though. “Fine,” he said. “But I want you to know that I consider the two of you have just as much right to these treasures as I do.”  
  
“Not my husband?” Narcissa asked, and placed her hand over her mouth to muffle what Harry was sure was a laugh when Harry glared at her.  
  
“You know the answer to that,” was what Harry chose to say instead, and he turned away and walked to the front doors of the Manor instead. He would find a safe place to put the honey, and then he would come back and spend some more time sorting through the ridiculous amount of things they’d received by owl.  
  
Like he had told Draco, there were a few things he’d like to keep in memory of Sirius, the same way he hadn’t wanted to give away the entire fortune to the goblins because of his memory. But those  _things_ were worth nothing against what he would have given if he’d been able to see his godfather again, touch him.  
  
Hug him goodbye.  
  
Harry sighed and shook off his mood. He would go back to looking through treasures, remembering the past, later. For now, he had part of a possible future to keep safe.  
  
Not that he knew, even now, if he should stay in the wizarding world. It would depend, in part, on what would happen the first time he and Draco went to Diagon Alley or elsewhere as a normal couple, and the wizarding world found out they had been tricked.   
  
Harry smiled. Now  _that_ was a part of the future he could look forward to indeed, and a part of the past that he wouldn’t be at all sad to banish.  
  
*  
  
“We don’t have to go if you don’t want to.”  
  
Draco hunched his shoulders a little, and checked the hang of his robes one more time. But Harry reached out and put a hand on Draco’s shoulder, and it was impossible to feign interest in busyness alone when Harry was doing that for him.  
  
“Hey,” Harry whispered. “I have my wand and I have my magic, always at the ready to defend you. You don’t have to worry about yourself. I promise you that.” He leaned in and kissed Draco softly on the cheek. “But I know that it might not reassure you much until we get out into the alley, and you see the ways I can defend us.”  
  
Draco looked him right in the eye. “You really don’t feel awkward going out in front of everyone after we’ve told them that you’re my sex slave and barely controlled and mad, and—and all the rest of it?”  
  
Harry’s smile turned soft and reflective. “If this was the first time that someone had ever written things like that about me? It would be as awkward as hell.” He leaned forwards and smoothed Draco’s robes himself, and Draco found that he couldn’t take his eyes off him. There was no question that Harry was, for Draco at least, the most brilliant thing he had found in his life.  
  
“But you’re forgetting that the papers have called me mad before. Evil. A Dark Lord. The Heir of Slytherin. An attention-seeker. A liar. The person who had to die to save the world, and then the person who had to become a slave to save them all.” Harry looked up from Draco’s robes, and his eyes were meltingly direct. “I know that I’m none of those things. At least this will be different. This will be me forcing them to write certain things, cope with certain things, because there’s a truth staring them in the face and they can’t ignore it.”  
  
“Someone might attack us and try to force you back inside because they think that you walking around outside the wards is a violation of the bargain we made with the goblins,” Draco murmured. “And they might panic that the goblins will destroy the economy after all.”  
  
Harry gave him a sharp smile. “I was studying for the Auror program most of this year, you know, before the goblins started making noise. I learned lots of spells that aren’t lethal and don’t even hurt that much, but they’re really  _embarrassing._ I know the incantations and the wand movements perfectly.”  
  
Draco leaned against him and kissed him, long and lingering. Harry totally gave into it and let Draco kiss him until their mouths felt numb. Then Harry stepped back and put his hands on Draco’s shoulders, shaking him a little, staring into his eyes.  
  
“I won’t give you up, and I won’t let them hurt you, and I won’t give this freedom up,” Harry whispered. “Don’t suggest it again.”  
  
Draco shook his head, and reached up to clasp one of Harry’s hands. He squeezed hard enough that Harry had to wring that hand when he let go, but Draco thought that was okay; he knew he’d made his point.  
  
*  
  
People really  _did_ turn to stare at them as they walked through Diagon Alley.  
  
 _Well, of course they do,_ Harry thought, and shook his head against irritation with himself.  _I’m the famous Harry Potter, and the last they knew I was just someone who might destroy the wizarding world. Like I was when I was resisting going into Gringotts to be a plaything for the goblins, and like fifth year, and like second year._  
  
Harry wondered idly whether even Voldemort had been accused of trying to destroy the wizarding world more often. Voldemort had probably had more fun, though, because he had been trying to  _accomplish_ that goal.  
  
 _Maybe I ought to have tried it once, just for the novelty._  
  
“What are you doing  _out_?”  
  
That was a tall, thin witch with a nose like a pickax, who seemed to have decided that she was going to be the one brave enough to speak if no one else was. Harry turned so he was walking backwards, keeping her in view. Draco was right beside his elbow; Harry could feel the reassuring brush of his robes.  
  
He tried to make the smile he gave the witch at least as reassuring, although from the way her eyes narrowed at him, she didn’t think it was. “I don’t have the madness we told the papers about,” he answered. “That was a trick to make sure that the goblins were satisfied I was really a slave and left us alone instead of checking on the Malfoys every five minutes. But I’ve made a new bargain with the goblins now, and I can be free and walking around the streets just like anyone else. Isn’t that nice?”  
  
The woman’s body stiffened like a stork about to peck somebody. She took her wand out and aimed it at him.  
  
Harry shot out one hand and closed it around her wand, smiling nastily. He didn’t use his magic yet, but the fearless look on his face seemed to freeze the woman as effectively as if he had.  
  
“One thing we didn’t lie about,” he said. “There’s  _no way_ that we could have lied about it. The grass that I blackened beneath my hands? I really do have that magic. I can destroy stone and marble and money, too, if I want. But my specialty is organic things.” He jerked his head at the wand he held. “Do you want to find out what my power does to wood?”  
  
Draco stood beside him. Harry could feel the small twitches that came up his arm through Draco’s motions, and knew that Draco was subduing wild, impatient laughter. He probably did want to tell Harry to use his power, but they had agreed that they wouldn’t do anything to give the impression that Draco was Harry’s “master.” That deception might be the hardest to put to rest.  
  
“Well?” Harry asked, when the witch stood there staring at him. She hadn’t even made a motion to take her wand back from him. “I asked you a question. Do you want to find out what kind of ash I can make your wand crumble into?”  
  
“No,” she whispered. She was shaking her head hard enough that Harry thought he could see her earlobes trembling.  
  
Harry eased off a little on the menace, and tried to make his smile merely dismissive. He didn’t release the wand, though. “Then step away slowly, and I’ll let go of the wand when you’re at the full extent of your arm. That will give you enough time to free it without pointing it at me again—which I really advise you not to do.”  
  
The witch nodded, after a second when she seemed to realize that Harry was  _still_ waiting for an answer. Harry slowly relaxed the hold of his fingers, loosening the grip until she was a meter from him and he really couldn’t stretch anymore. He let it go, and the witch immediately tucked her wand back into her sleeve and walked away as fast as she could go.  
  
“See, that wasn’t so hard, was it?” Harry called at her back.  
  
The flash of a curse from the side caught his attention, and Harry immediately flicked his own wand and raised a Shield Charm in front of him and Draco. That one really was a spell he could do as fast as thought. The curse collided with the shield and splattered down on the cobblestones, making one flicker and blacken in a way Harry recognized.  
  
He followed the line of the curse back to the wizard who had cast it, and clucked his tongue. “The Bone-Melting Curse? That’s an interesting study of the Dark Arts you’ve done there, stranger.”  
  
“You can’t destroy all our wands!” someone yelled from a short distance away. “The Ministry won’t allow it!”  
  
“The Ministry won’t allow you to cast that curse, either, but someone did,” Harry said. He didn’t look away from the shaking wizard who had cast the curse, and he didn’t think it would be a good idea to do so. The wizard was probably their most dangerous opponent right now. He might try and kill them out of sheer panic. “Before that, someone pulled their wand on us. I’m allowed to defend myself, and that’s what I’ve done. With plenty of warning.”  
  
There was a confused response at that, the crowd calling out with a series of hisses and insults and yells. Harry merely listened. The curse-casting wizard put down his wand and scurried away in the midst of the distraction.  
  
No one else cast a spell at them. There were a lot of threats, though. Harry finally shrugged and said, “You could go and ask the goblins for their side of the story, if you’re that interested. Or ask the Ministry what they intend to do about me.”  
  
For some reason, that struck a lot of people as a good idea. Off they marched towards the Ministry, and the others backed off and found themselves focused on their own business. Harry laughed softly and turned to walk towards Flourish and Blotts with Draco, their intended destination all along.  
  
“Aren’t you worried?” Draco asked him softly.  
  
“That someone might hurt us with a stray curse I couldn’t stop? Sure.” Harry looked at him. “That I’ll get arrested for this? No.”  
  
Draco shook his head in wonder. “It must be a side-effect of living in danger all your life,” he muttered, as if he was talking to himself. “You must get used to it and not worry as much about the possible consequences.”  
  
Harry leaned his hand on Draco’s shoulder. “Part of it’s that. And part of it’s just being confident to handle myself. And I know there are no laws that cover this situation. Because I looked it up,” he added, seeing Draco’s mouth open.  
  
There was a small silence, and then Draco smiled again and faced forwards. Harry didn’t think he was meant to hear the next, softly murmured words. “That means that you’re thinking about staying in the wizarding world.”  
  
Harry thought of talking about what a large and complex decision that was, what kinds of factors would play into it, the sort of things that he would like to say and which he couldn’t say.  
  
At least, not in the middle of a public street.  
  
So he leaned a little harder on Draco’s shoulder, and they continued walking, in the middle of the delicious fresh air and the sunlight.


	27. A Personal Idea

“They’re spreading horrible lies about you in the paper again, Harry.”  
  
Hermione spoke the words with a strong tone, but she kept her eyes on the paper. Harry thought it was to distract herself from the sight of Draco sprawled on Harry’s bed, his arm wrapped firmly around Harry’s waist. Harry put his hand over Draco’s and squeezed a little when he felt Draco starting to sit up and speak. He thought he should handle this.  
  
Draco grunted as if he didn’t agree, but leaned back on the bed and was silent. Harry rewarded him with a light caress to his hand. Then he grinned at Hermione—and at Ron, who was sitting in a chair next to Harry’s waterfall with his eyes closed, not a care in the world.  
  
“I knew they would,” Harry agreed calmly. “But they can say whatever they want. I don’t care.”  
  
“Then you’re really not going to sue the  _Daily Prophet?_ ” Hermione put down the paper and stared at him. “I would, if it was me.”  
  
Harry sighed softly. “You might have a chance of winning. But I know a lot of people would support the  _Prophet_ and the reporters who are writing about me, because it’s  _me,_ and they think the public has a right to know all the gossip about celebrities, or something.”  
  
Angry tears glistened in Hermione’s eyes. Draco shifted uneasily, but Harry squeezed his hand again, and he was still. If he thought that Hermione would break down on them, he was wrong.  
  
“It’s not fair,” Hermione whispered harshly. “Why can’t they keep in mind for  _two seconds_ that you defeated Voldemort and won the war for them? Do they wish they fought him themselves? Why are they so—so arrogant and stupid?”  
  
Her voice rose almost to a shout. Harry was glad that none of the house-elves had come hurrying, the way they usually would when a human was upset in the house, to see what was wrong. The sight of a Malfoy elf might set off Hermione’s temper in a way he couldn’t deal with right now.  
  
“They’re that stupid because they feel guilty, I think,” said Harry. He had thought about it long and hard the night before, after he and Draco were exhausted and Draco had gone to sleep but Harry had lain up. “They don’t want to have piled everything on the shoulders of a sixteen-year-old boy. They wish they were better people. They want to excuse themselves from the guilt of the war, and the things that have happened afterwards, the Death Eaters who were running around and the way they turned against me. They can’t bear to face the thought of their own fear, the way they just stepped back and let the goblins have me. It’s easier to blame me instead.”  
  
“Do you really think it’s that, mate?” Ron opened his eyes and tilted his head a little, seeming to pull some trick with his eyes that cut Draco out of the picture entirely. Harry would have to speak to Ron about that, but not right now. “I mean, it seems like it could be true, but it’s also too— _understandable_.”  
  
Harry snorted. “I’m not saying they think about it the same way. I think it’s true, but they’ve buried that truth at the very bottom of their minds, and instead they came up with all sorts of justifications about why I should be the one to fight Voldemort and suffer the punishment from the goblins, and they came up with reasons why they couldn’t.”  
  
“It’s like the justifications people make for keeping house-elves,” said Hermione, nodding fiercely. “They do it because it’s convenient for  _them_ , and they never think about the truth!”  
  
Draco stirred. Harry reached out to press his shoulder back into the bed, but Draco sat up, gave him an even look, and said, “You can’t keep your friends and me from conflict forever, Harry. I have to say something before things go further and we have a stupid misunderstanding like the kind you’re talking about.”  
  
Harry hesitated, but Hermione was already surging forwards into the heart of the battle. “You do just justify convenience for keeping your house-elves locked up, don’t you? You don’t want to let them go because then you might have to learn household charms and how to pick up after yourselves!”  
  
Draco sighed hard. “Granger, what happens when most house-elves are freed? I mean, I know what happened with Dobby, but with  _most_ of them? They’re miserable.”  
  
“That’s only because they’ve been conditioned to think that they must be slaves!” Hermione countered fiercely. “They could be taught better, they could work for money, they could be free elves like Dobby was—”  
  
“Most of them don’t want that,” Draco cut in. “The elf you rescued from the Crouches spent all her time at Hogwarts wailing and weeping and talking about how she didn’t want to be there, she wanted to have a family to serve again. And I don’t think that you freed the Black house-elf, did you?” he added over his shoulder to Harry. “Kreacher, that was his name?”  
  
Harry nodded, watching Draco in silence. He thought he probably would have freed Kreacher, with Hermione working on him, except for the goblins’ demands that had interfered with his normal life.  
  
“Well, then,” said Draco, and turned around to fix Hermione with a sound glare. “You put up with Kreacher during the war. I know that you were staying in the Black house with him for a long time. And you don’t have to be here very often, and you don’t have to see the elves serving us. You can put up with them because they mean that Harry don’t have to do slave work.”  
  
“Everyone should do their  _own_ chores!” Hermione’s fists were clenched, and her face was red. “That’s fair! Why can’t you see that?”  
  
“You say that they don’t really know what they want?” Draco had a nasty smile on his face. Harry tensed, ready to interfere if he had to. “How does that make you different from the people who say that Harry doesn’t really know what he has or what he wants to do? You keep doubting their word, you won’t do what they want, you won’t help them live better lives the way they are. You just want to change their whole lives so it will make  _you_ more comfortable.” He paused, then added, “I think that’s more despicable than any task we’ve asked them to perform for us.”  
  
Hermione stared at him with wide and steadily rounding eyes, and Harry tightened his grip on Draco’s waist for a moment. Draco squeezed back, but didn’t turn to look at him. Apparently, keeping his eyes on Hermione’s face was more satisfactory for him at the moment.  
  
“Dobby wanted to be free,” said Hermione, and she was almost stuttering in her indignation. “You had no right to keep him here and mistreat him the way you did!”  
  
“Shall I call one of the other elves?” Draco asked. “Do you want to ask them if they’d like to be free?”  
  
Hermione folded her arms. “I know that they would say almost anything to oblige you when they found out that  _you_ were the one they had to speak in front of! And I know that mistreating someone can’t be right no matter if they want to work for you or not!”  
  
“She’s right on that,” Harry muttered, catching Draco’s attention. “I don’t see how making the elves injure themselves solves anything, especially when you want them to work and they can’t because they’re hurt.”  
  
Draco hesitated, then waved a hand. “Oh, all right, that wasn’t the smartest thing we could have done. I will say that I was young and stupid, and Father was in a stressed-out mood that year he abused Dobby. I don’t know why.”  
  
Harry thought it probably had to do with the Ministry and the Weasleys, but he said nothing. It wasn’t as though he could go back in time and change it.  
  
“He gave a book to my little sister that almost killed her,” said Ron, quietly, pointedly, but in the way Harry had observed before that Ron had, where he could draw all the attention in the room to himself. “What are we supposed to do with  _that_? Just accept it?”  
  
Draco’s jaw firmed for a moment. “My father made arrangements to pay a weregild for that. You have to accept that and leave the past in the past if you’re going to accept the money.”  
  
Ron cast a piercing look at Harry. Harry nodded. “And I know that Ginny wants the weregild, because you told me she did,” he added.  
  
Ron made a face and waved a hand. “I still don’t understand why you’re with Malfoy and not writing to Ginny, mate, but fine. Then that’s one crime that’s left in the past. Are you going to forget about all the other things they did?”  
  
“Like not identifying me to the Snatchers, and lying to Voldemort for me, and paying a vault for my freedom?” Harry shook his head meditatively. “I think I would be stupid to forget about all the other things the Malfoys have done.”  
  
“That’s not what I meant,” said Ron, but Hermione was the one who nudged him in the ribs this time.  
  
“Do you swear that you don’t mistreat any of your other house-elves?” she asked Draco. She was speaking as if they were the only two people in the room, and Harry could understand that. Hermione  _did_ get passionate about the rights of house-elves. “That you don’t order them to injure themselves because they made a mistake or told you something you didn’t want to hear?”  
  
“I never did that again after our fifth year,” said Draco, and held her eyes. “I learned that there were other things in the world that mattered more.”  
  
 _And he was barely in the Manor for most of our sixth year,_ Harry thought, but he wasn’t going to say it. If the hardest thing for his best friends about coming to terms with Draco dating him was what Draco had done in the past, rather than just Draco dating Harry at all, then Harry would leave them to work out what kind of reconciliation they could.  
  
Hermione sat back slowly. She folded her hands in her lap and shook her head. “Then I can accept it, although I still don’t like any wizarding family having house-elves working for them.”  
  
Draco bit back what he would have said—Harry knew, because he squeezed Draco’s hand so that his first response didn’t come out—and inclined his head graciously. “As you will. I promise that you don’t have to be served by the house-elves while you’re here, and they can stay out of Harry’s room.”  
  
“This is what you want, mate?”  
  
Harry turned around and realized that Ron was looking at him. Hermione might be reassured by the news about house-elves, but Ron would want to know that Harry was happy with someone he had always thought of as a slimy git, too.  
  
Harry smiled and nodded. “Draco taught me about things that I never knew,” he added, and grinned as Ron flushed and groaned and flung up a hand.   
  
“Fine, fine, I’m sorry I asked! I don’t want to know!” Ron shook his head rapidly and stood up. “Then if you want it and he’s good to you, there’s nothing more to be said. Come on, Hermione. We should get home before Mum thinks that she has to hunt us down for Sunday dinner.”  
  
Hermione smiled and stood up. “Good-bye Harry. Malfoy.” Her voice was cool, but not as cool as it had been, and she didn’t edit Draco out of reality with her eyes as she walked up and kissed Harry on the cheek. “We’ll see you next week.”  
  
Draco was silent until Harry’s friends had walked out of the room and beyond earshot. “I don’t know how you can  _stand_ having them as friends.”  
  
“The same way I can stand being around you after all the years when I couldn’t,” said Harry.  
  
“Tell me that you were never—that you didn’t—”  
  
Harry let Draco stew in visions of him sleeping with Ron and Hermione for a few seconds, and then laughed and took his hand. “No. I meant that you went through some things for me, and so they did. They did it for a lot longer, and for different reasons, but I trust them and I want to be with them. And I trust you and I want to be with you, too.”  
  
Draco looked at him with quiet eyes, and then asked, “Would you stay in the wizarding world for them?”  
  
“They haven’t asked me to.”  
  
“If they did?”  
  
Harry leaned in to kiss Draco, and breathed into Draco’s ear when he came closer, “I haven’t made my decision yet. Don’t ask right now.”  
  
Draco sighed and curved a hand around the back of his neck, and they both found something else to concentrate on.


	28. A Rope of His Own Braiding

“Harry,” Narcissa said, the minute she stepped into the breakfast room and found her husband glaring at the wall and her son-in-law scowling with his arms folded. And it was not because she thought Harry had somehow caused the latest argument between him and Lucius.  
  
Harry flinched, and then stood up. For a moment, Narcissa thought he would stalk past her, and she put out her hand to detain him. Harry paused and came back this time, but his gaze was miserable.  
  
“How much danger am I going to put him in?” he whispered.  
  
For all that Harry could get along in an uneasy way with Lucius, Narcissa knew he was not talking about him. She nodded and said, “Let me get some food, and then I will come along with you.” Even as she spoke, Ren appeared from the kitchens with a plate of foie gras and thick French cheeses. Narcissa smiled at him and turned to walk with Harry.  
  
Harry waited until they were in the corridor to ask, “Do you usually eat that stuff for breakfast?”  
  
“No,” said Narcissa. “They are extremely rich. I am going to eat them with you, if you want to go into the gardens and eat them.”  
  
For a moment, Harry watched her, blinking, as though even now she might do something that was hurtful for no other reason than that she could. Then he nodded and murmured, “All right.”   
  
Narcissa hid a smile as she followed him into the nearest garden. Rain had turned some of the ground into mud, but she cast a few charms that trimmed the mud back and dried the grass, and then conjured a blanket with a flourish. Harry watched all the time with eyes that were almost blank, then sat down on the blanket and stared at her.  
  
“Tell me what you fear about putting Draco in danger,” she said, and sat down next to Harry and began pulling out food from the basket. “I think you know that Draco is capable of taking care of himself, and all the more capable with the spells you’ve taught him.”  
  
Harry sighed noiselessly and watched the plate she pushed towards him, until Narcissa indicated her desire by tapping the edge of the plate with a nail. Then he gloomily started eating. Narcissa refrained from some of the things she could have said, and ate some to keep him company.  
  
“Something he—Lucius—said this morning reminded me that I can defend myself and even Draco from most of the danger that comes with defying the public,” Harry whispered. “But I can’t protect him from everything. And no matter what  _I_ decide to do, I know that  _Draco_ wants to stay in the wizarding world.” He fixed Narcissa with a desperate look. “Have I prevented him from doing that?”  
  
Narcissa shook her head and sipped from the glass of clear water that had come into her hand when the house-elves noticed she was eating outside. “No,” she said finally, because Harry hadn’t stopped staring. “Draco knows how to live well within wards, and within his friends’ houses, and he has that ability to defend himself that I spoke about before. There are places in the wizarding world where someone with Malfoy or pure-blood- heritage will always be welcome. And Lucius could, if he had to and there was no other choice, pull political strings to keep Draco from harm. He still has a few favors to call in. He’s been saving them for a disaster, which this is not. But if it became so, then he would do what he had to.”  
  
Harry closed his eyes and turned his head uneasily away. Narcissa went on eating until she thought the silence had stretched quite long enough, and then added, “Has Lucius been telling you that you’ve put Draco in danger? Why did you believe him so readily, when you do not about anything else?”  
  
She thought she knew the reason, but Harry gave it to her a moment later. “I didn’t think enough about that,” he muttered. “It struck me harder than it would have because it just didn’t—I didn’t  _think_ about it at all, when I should have. And it’s Draco. He’s different.”  
  
Narcissa hid a smile behind her plate. Harry probably wouldn’t understand any of the emotions in it except the amusement, and might take offense at the amusement. “Yes, I understand. But I can tell you that Draco will be safe.”  
  
Harry slowly opened his eyes. “That’s good,” he said, and his voice was steadier now. He took a bite himself. “I didn’t—I know it sounds horrible, but I didn’t want to stay here just to protect him.”  
  
“He would hate for you to stay for that reason anyway,” Narcissa replied instantly, knowing what she spoke was true, and thinking Harry should know it as well. But he was young, and as he had just proved, the thoughts of the young didn’t always match up with reality. “He would want it to be a free choice, and this smacks of pity.”  
  
“I didn’t mean it to!” Harry protested at once, opening his eyes and glaring at Narcissa as if this was somehow her fault. “I was only saying what I thought.”  
  
“Take my advice,” said Narcissa dryly, “and find some other way to phrase it to Draco.”  
  
Harry half-snorted, then sighed. “You’re right. He wouldn’t take it well.”  
  
“And  _that_ is an understatement,” Narcissa murmured, thinking of how Draco would react if he knew that the prize he had sought to win, Harry’s residence in the wizarding world, had only come about from fear.  
  
“Do you want me to stay?” Harry was watching Narcissa from the corner of his eye, and nibbling on some foie gras that stained his hands. He noticed a second later and wiped the stain away with an absent charm. “You’ve never said.”  
  
“And I won’t, because it would influence your decision unfairly,” Narcissa replied. “Draco is not the only one who wishes for you to make it of your own free will.”  
  
Harry gave a brief grin. “If you were opposing me, at least I would have something solid to fight. Otherwise, I really  _do_ have to make this choice all on my own.” He nibbled a wedge of cheese and put it down. “There are reasons not to stay.”  
  
“I know,” said Narcissa softly. “The way the public has treated you is unfair.” She had to talk about it softly, or she would begin to contemplate revenge. And she rarely allowed herself to do that, because the temptation of carrying it out would overcome her.  
  
“The way they treat me, yeah,” said Harry, staring into the distance with eyes that Narcissa knew had seen more than she imagined. “But also the way almost no one stood up for me when it came to the goblins. And the expectations. And the betrayal when I was  _twelve._ Half the school—more—decided I was evil and the Heir of Slytherin based on  _nothing_.”  
  
Narcissa half-smiled. “Draco tells me that you suspected  _him_ of being the Heir on much the same evidence.”  
  
Harry waved his hand. “Yeah, that does embarrass me. But I wasn’t spreading the story all around the school and embarrassing him the way that people were doing to me.” He sighed through his nostrils like a dragon and picked up another piece of cheese. “I don’t know. I thought, before the mess with Gringotts, that my life was finally normal and I could be an Auror and have a family and everything would be fine. But I’m wondering now if I wouldn’t have run into another problem where the whole wizarding world betrayed me and decided that it was better to leave.”  
  
“Very likely,” Narcissa murmured. The world was not rational on the topic of Harry Potter, she knew, perhaps because too many people trusted the  _Daily Prophet,_ perhaps because no one had ever done what Harry had done. Narcissa had read the most ridiculously passionate defenses of him and idolization of him as a god right next to the silliest accusations possible of crimes. The  _Prophet_ would publish anything, and swayed by the latest thing they read, the public could turn from welcoming to hostile overnight.  
  
But there was one thing she wanted to know. “If the reaction to you had remained positive, the way it was right after the war, would you stay?”  
  
Harry gave a full-body shudder that seemed to crawl up his spine and out again at the nape of his neck. “That wasn’t—it wasn’t  _worse,_ because people trying to assault me in the middle of Diagon Alley is definitely worse, but it was  _horrible._ People were throwing themselves at my feet. People were creeping into my room and stripping naked until I put up the strongest wards I knew. There were invitations that—” He shook his head. “So maybe not.”  
  
Narcissa nodded, and they finished the meal in companionable silence. Harry grinned at her again as he stood up, probably going Draco-hunting. “How is it that you manage to reassure me so much?”  
  
“If you are comparing my reassuring skills to  _Lucius’s_ …”  
  
Harry laughed, and took his leave. Narcissa watched him go, and then twisted patiently around and regarded her husband. He had looked out several times from a window that opened onto the garden from a library, but hadn’t ventured out. In that, he was wise.   
  
He came out now, and stood frowning at her from a short distance away. Narcissa gestured with a fork, and Lucius grimaced and limped towards her, leaning on the cane more than he would want either Draco or Harry to see. He Transfigured one of the stones in a wall that edged a flowerbed into a chair instead of lowering himself to the blanket. Though Narcissa thought he could have borne the loss to his dignity, his leg kept her respectfully silent.  
  
Lucius folded his hands over the top of the cane, and regarded her. Narcissa regarded him back.  
  
“Do you believe that he can  _really_ keep Draco safe?” Lucius asked at last, voice as weary as though they’d already held a whole conversation.  
  
“Of all the things that might concern you about their companionship, that is the one that should give you the least concern,” Narcissa firmly. “Whether or not he can, you know that neither of  _us_ would let our son come to harm.”  
  
Then, for the first time all morning, Lucius smiled. “I don’t know why I forgot that, my dear,” he said, and reached out to take her hand. “I should have thought of it.”  
  
Narcissa turned his hand over and kissed the back as he had so often done with her, and they sat together in silence that reminded Narcissa of things she, too, had forgotten about their own companionship.  
  
*  
  
“But I proved that I can get along with your friends!”  
  
Draco winced at the sound of his own voice a second later, but the damage was done. Harry pulled back from him and stood up, straightening his shirt as if he was going to walk out of the dueling room right there and then.  
  
“That’s not the only problem with me staying here,” he said coldly, and folded his arms and glared at Draco.  
  
Draco winced again. Things had been going well this morning. He and Harry had started a practice dueling session that turned into a snogging session—something that both of them didn’t need that much  _practice_ in, honestly—and they had sagged onto one of the couches here and kissed until Draco’s mouth was numb and his hands shaking with happiness. And Draco had murmured how glad he was that Harry was like this with him, because it gave Harry a stronger incentive to stay in the wizarding world with him.   
  
And then Harry had taken it all the wrong way.  
  
“It was  _a_ problem, though, right?” Draco asked, because now that he had begun this conversation he might as well pursue it. “And I’ve solved it.”  
  
“You solved it,” Harry conceded. He looked almost the way he had when he first began training Draco, before Draco knew there was or could be anything between them, and his arms clenched harder and harder as they stayed folded. “But there’s so many other things…I don’t want you to  _pressure_ me, Draco.”  
  
“I’m not pressuring you,” said Draco. Fine, he would defend himself, if there was no way of coaxing Harry back to the couch and into his arms. “I’m just telling the truth. You wouldn’t want to stay with someone who couldn’t get along with your friends. And I do now.”  
  
“Arguing with them is getting along with them?” Harry looked at him with an amused half-sideways glance.  
  
Draco shook his head. “We didn’t argue as much as we would have before you and I became lovers.”  
  
“That just proves that I could have both of you in my house at the same time.” Harry began to prowl back and forth again. “I’ve thought of it, you know. Having a house of my own. I know that it might not sound like much to you, but I slept in a cupboard when I was a kid. A space all my own is great.”  
  
“You don’t like your bedroom?” Draco didn’t think that was true, or Harry wouldn’t have chosen it. But he didn’t like the trend that Harry’s thoughts were taking.  
  
“Oh, for fuck’s sake!” Harry turned around and glared at him. “I  _do_ like my room! But I want a space of my own, too. What if I could have a flat in the Muggle world that was connected to Malfoy Manor and to Ron and Hermione’s house by Floo connections? Do you know how much it costs to connect a house to the Floo network?”  
  
“If you were living in a flat, then you wouldn’t be living with me,” said Draco. It was the only truth he knew in this confusing morass that their clear and uncomplicated relationship seemed to have become.  
  
“Not all the time,” said Harry. “But I could spend time here without anyone pounding on the gates and demanding to know if I was living with you, and I could come and go from the Muggle world to the wizarding one in peace.” He sighed and sat down on the couch near Draco, looking as drained as though he’d fought a duel with one of the people who had come up to him yesterday. “I love you, Draco.”  
  
Draco reached out and took his hand, but didn’t spring up and proclaim victory yet. It sounded as though there was a “But” coming.  
  
“But I don’t know if I want to stay in a world where some people are always going to hate me no matter what I did.” Harry fell limply against the couch back and stared up at the ceiling. “I was almost sick with worry for you this morning.”  
  
“And now you aren’t worried?” Draco couldn’t help asking dryly. “What did I do to convince you I was a competent duelist? So far, the best you’ll say is that I could defend myself against  _some_ people.”  
  
“No,” said Harry. “Your mother reassured me. She said that your father could protect you, and so could she, and the wards.”  
  
Draco paused. “That’s true.” He supposed he would rather Harry be reassured than constantly worried, at that.  
  
“And I know that we caused part of our own trouble with the lies we spread,” said Harry, and pulled his legs up to his chest. Draco touched his shoulder. Harry tilted his head so that he pinned Draco’s hand between his cheek and his shoulder. “But I don’t think that the consequences are justified or anything.”  
  
“You would have put up with what they’re saying because you think you  _deserve_ it?” Draco shook his head, appalled. “Maybe you should go live in the Muggle world. Just for a while,” he added hastily, when Harry stared at him. “I mean, just until you get your head cleared out and stop thinking you deserve pain because other people are idiots.”  
  
He meant it as a last-ditch plan, but Harry’s eyes shone, and he leaned in and kissed Draco softly. “Thank you,” Harry whispered. “I knew you would understand if I explained it to you just right.”  
  
Draco opened his mouth to say that wasn’t it—  
  
And then foresaw a repetition of the argument, and the destruction of his good understanding with Harry at the moment.  
  
And honestly, he would rather put the decision off for a while, and enjoy the benefits of Harry’s company in the same house while he had it.  
  
“You’re welcome,” he said, and then started kissing Harry again, as much to shut himself up as to get Harry’s tongue back in his mouth.  
  
Harry’s enthusiastic response more than justified his little plan, Draco felt sure.


	29. Separation

“But you’re not really leaving the wizarding world?” Hermione perched on the edge of the bed that Harry knew perfectly well she shared with Ron, swinging her legs back and forth as she stared at him.  
  
Harry got up and roamed restlessly around Ron’s bedroom instead of answering. He was visiting the Burrow for the first time since the goblins had tried to enslave him, and Molly had greeted him with a hug that Harry thought had crushed small bones throughout his body. She had whispered how glad she was to see him out and about, and Harry had hugged her back.  
  
It had been nice—until he stepped away from Molly and saw Ginny standing in the kitchen doorway when her arms folded. But she had turned and left before Harry could say anything, and anyway, Molly had been plying him with enough food that Harry didn’t miss the Malfoys’ lunch table at all.  
  
“You didn’t answer me,” Hermione reminded him helpfully, as if Harry might have overlooked that.  
  
Harry closed his eyes and rubbed his forehead. “I’m not leaving it permanently,” he said. “What I want is a place that has ties to both. Maybe mostly in the Muggle world, or an isolated corner of the wizarding world. But Floo connections to all the places I want to go. I want to do some shopping in Diagon Alley and spend time with Draco and you lot. But I don’t want to have _no_ option except people staring at me.”  
  
“So you want a place between the two worlds,” Hermione said, nodding. “That makes perfect sense to me.” She was quiet as she watched Harry pick up one of her books—her main addition to Ron’s room—and put it down again. “What doesn’t Draco like about it?”  
  
Harry blinked and looked up. “Am I that obvious?”  
  
Hermione smiled tenderly at him. “Maybe not to someone who doesn’t know you as well.”  
  
Harry sighed and sat down on the bed with her. “Draco wants me to live with him, and make Malfoy Manor my permanent and only home.”  
  
“Did you explain why you didn’t want to do that?” Hermione took his hand. “The way that you want a place of your own that has nothing to do with the Dursleys, and how you’ve been deprived of that, and—”  
  
“I did,” Harry admitted, and he winced at the tone of his own voice. It was so dejected. He coughed and tried to sit up and sound a little more cheerful. “He didn’t want to listen. I think that he sees it as abandonment, after the way he’s tried to do so much for me.”  
  
Hermione peered at him. “You’re allowed to want a life of your own, Harry, no matter what someone else wants. And you’re entitled to tell them that, too, if they try to interfere.”  
  
Harry nodded and wondered how he could explain it to Hermione. How he didn’t feel like what the Malfoys were doing was interference; there was real care and concern there. And how he still wanted to have a place away from them, where he could retreat when he wanted to think and didn’t want to be around other people or deal with Lucius’s prickliness or even Draco or Narcissa.  
  
It seemed so simple to him. It _sounded_ simple, when he explained it to Hermione. But Draco kept hunching his shoulders and turning away, and when he did speak, made it clear that he did feel abandoned, no matter how careful Harry was trying to be.  
  
“Maybe you just have to force a confrontation,” Hermione finally suggested, when they had sat there in silence for several minutes, and Harry had begun to feel that they might go on sitting like that until Ron got home. “Some place where he can’t get away, and hold him there and explain what you mean. That you want to come and go from your house to his. Would it reassure him if you said that you wanted to keep your rooms there? It was such a big thing for him that you accepted them.”  
  
Harry opened his mouth, but someone knocked on the door and opened it before he could think of what to say. Ginny stepped in, shut the door behind her, and looked at Harry.  
  
“I heard what you said, Hermione,” Ginny murmured. “Sometimes you just have to force a confrontation, and this is the way I have to do it. Why didn’t you keep writing to me, Harry? If you could write to Ron and Hermione with that raven, then you could write to me.”  
  
“How, when you hadn’t acted like you wanted to hear from me for weeks and weeks by that point?” Harry demanded. He knew Hermione was slipping out of the room, but that was fine. He had eyes only for Ginny, anyway. “You stopped writing to me when people started supporting what the goblins were saying!”  
  
Ginny flushed and turned around, kicking the door. But she didn’t storm out, to Harry’s private relief. “Ron said that you were trying really hard to concentrate on your fight against the goblins and controlling your magic. That you didn’t need _distractions_.”  
  
Harry sighed. Ron had said that, but… “Did he tell you that your letters were distracting me? Did he say I had called them distractions?”  
  
“He said that those were the only things you were interested in,” said Ginny. “So I thought my letters must be distractions, and fine, I wouldn’t write them anymore.” She stared at him from eyes that had a good deal of hurt in them. “And then you never wrote to me, even to ask what was happening to me and why I’d stopped writing. And then there was this slavery, where you supposedly wouldn’t be able to communicate, and then you didn’t even write to me when you _could_ have.”  
  
“I was still waiting for you to write to me.” Harry rubbed his forehead. It seemed the whole thing had been a stupid misunderstanding, and he was sorry for that.  
  
But that neither of them had ever tried to get past that misunderstanding indicated something else to Harry. He looked up. “How important am I to you, Ginny?”  
  
"You were the most important thing," said Ginny, head still turned away and foot moodily swinging back and forth. "Once."  
  
Harry nodded. He could remember the crushing sense of Ginny's importance right before he went on the Horcrux hunt, when it felt like he would die if he didn't date her and walking away was the hardest thing he'd ever done. But now he didn't feel that way. "Do you still think that you would have let me go on in silence if I was the most important thing to you?"  
  
Ginny looked up quickly. "That doesn't excuse the way you treated me."  
  
Harry could have had a long argument with her about the way that Ginny had treated _him_ , not writing to him and making him feel even more alone in the world with the goblins mistreating him and society's disapproval than he really was. But he didn't want to. Instead, he said, "You're right. What I'm saying is that if we were really meant to be together, we would have thought of each other night and day. We would have written to each other even if we were angry or hurt. We would have written and kept on writing."  
  
Ginny's face flushed for a second. "Ron and Hermione aren't together all day. You can date someone and not be with them all the time. When I thought you were going to go into the bank and be stranded there, I knew the goblins wouldn't let you write to me."  
  
"But then when the Malfoys rescued me?" Harry made it a question, and as gentle as he could.  
  
Ginny gave him a mule's expression. "I didn't expect you to go off and start dating Draco Malfoy!" For a second, she paled instead of flushed. "How much of that was just because he was there? How much of you dating me was just because _I_ was there, and I was convenient? Ron's little sister. You'd be his brother-in-law if you married me, and you'd be part of the family. How much of it was because of that?"  
  
Harry shook his head. He could remember back to his life before the war, how he used to feel, but it no longer had the ability to impact him as much as it had at the time. "I don't know. Probably a lot."  
  
Ginny flinched as if he'd hit her. But she did manage to get her breath back and continue full-steam a moment later. "How _romantic,_ Harry. How deeply romantic." She bowed her head and turned away so that her hair shielded her face.  
  
"I'm sorry," said Harry, feeling wretched and as though he was a kind of cheat. "I really am. But I don't know...I don't know what else to say. I think that I did start dating you because you were convenient, and because I really liked you. But I started dating Draco because he was reaching out to me, and I was with him all the time, and I started seeing qualities in him that I liked."  
  
"What you're saying is that your relationship with him is deeper than the one you had with me." Ginny stood there, oddly calm, as if saying the most awful thing and getting it out was a kind of purging.  
  
"I don't know," said Harry, and tugged sharply at his hair. "I can look back and see all sorts of motivations I had for doing things that I didn't acknowledge at the time, but I don't know..."  
  
"It's deeper," Ginny said. "If you didn't consider the _convenience_ of marrying into his family. It's deeper."  
  
Harry looked up. "It's convenient in the sense that their family is the one sheltering me, and I thought I was going to have to stay in the house for a year. Yeah."  
  
Ginny shook her head, something like wonder and something like mourning mingled in her face. "Even with someone you supposedly love the most, you think of things like that. It's sort of sad."  
  
"I'm trying to be honest," Harry said. "Maybe it's good that we had this conversation, though. Then we can stop expecting the other one to write, and we can stop expecting that maybe we'll get together sometime in the future."  
  
"Even if you leave Malfoy, you'll never get back together with me, will you?" Ginny had one hand positioned at her side as if she was going to swing it up and either touch him or draw her wand, and Harry kept an eye on it, remembering how quick she was with a Bat-Bogey Hex. But she didn't move it. "Even though I could accept you wanting to live in the Muggle world, and he can't?"  
  
"Would you live there with me?" Harry asked, looking back at her face.  
  
Ginny flushed again. "I wouldn't mind if you had your own flat that was linked by a Floo connection to the Burrow."  
  
Harry nodded. "Then the only difference between you is that I haven't persuaded him around yet, and you wouldn't need the persuasion."  
  
Ginny seemed about to say something else, but maybe she realized it was useless. She shook her head violently and turned away. Harry watched until she had been gone about two minutes, but she didn't come back. Harry leaned over and gently shut the door of the room.  
  
It was amazing that someone who had once mattered so much to him was now only a friend, and someone he was still a little upset at for not writing to him, and someone he had once thought of as an annoying pest was his lover and his friend. But then, Harry didn't think that anyone would have predicted him being a Horcrux and the savior of the wizarding world and nearly a goblin slave, either.  
  
 _Maybe I should just stop expecting my life to move in predictable patterns._  
  
*  
  
Draco was still jumpier and angrier than he'd like to admit to himself when he saw Harry at dinner that day. That had something to do with the length of time Harry had spent at the Burrow. Draco had tried to read, but visions of his friends persuading Harry to live with them, since he had this argument going on with Draco, danced in his head.  
  
Harry came back for dinner, though, and although he was speaking to Draco's mum when Draco came into the dining room, he looked up with a smile that was gentle and bright and private. Draco walked over to the table, reassured, and took his usual seat opposite Harry.  
  
Throughout dinner, Harry paid more attention to touching Draco's foot with his under the table than he did to the food. At least, he did until a gentle word from Narcissa made him use his fork more properly. Draco smiled into his plate and acted with a noteworthy grace that he hoped Harry would look upon as a free model to imitate.  
  
When they left the dinner table, Harry immediately caught Draco's hand and murmured, "I'd like to go for a walk in the gardens."  
  
Draco's heart quickened. He doubted it was anything so ordinary as sweet nothings that Harry wanted to tell him. But he managed to nod and, he thought, look relatively normal as he led Harry outside.  
  
Harry chose a path that led them close to the night-blooming flowers that dotted the garden, some of them huge and smelling so sweet Draco choked a little. But being near the flowers seemed to give Harry courage. He reached out, touched one, and then turned around and blurted, "Is there really _no_ way that you could accept me having a Muggle flat that was linked to the Manor?"  
  
Draco winced. At least Harry hadn't come back with an announcement that he was moving out, but he wondered if his friends had been talking to him about this after all.   
  
"I want to live with you," he said, and looked down at the flowers himself. "If you were in a flat and I was here, I wouldn't really be living with you."  
  
"I don't see why it's any different than our having separate rooms," Harry murmured peacefully, without letting go of his hand.  
  
Draco tore his hand away and glared. "You _really_ can't see a difference? _Really_?"  
  
"I suppose there is one," said Harry. "But I would come back and visit all the time, and there would be some days when we couldn't see each other, and there would be times we went shopping together, and times we went shopping separately. You gave me freedom back when no one else would have, and a purpose, and you helped me with my vengeance. And you gave me love when I didn't even know I was looking for it." He reached out and took Draco's hand again. His grip was almost painful. "I don't know what else you would ask for. I owe you a lot. But I don't want this relationship to be based on debts."  
  
"Of course not," Draco said stiffly. It hadn't even occurred to him that Harry might still be thinking about this in terms of the life-debts. The thought horrified him. "But I want you with me all the time."  
  
Harry gave him a wry look. "What happens if one or both of us get jobs?"  
  
Draco paused. He hadn't thought about that, either.  
  
Harry nodded. "If I had stayed in the house for a year, then yeah, we wouldn't have been parted for long in that time, and we would have had all those days together." Draco was satisfied that Harry's eyes expressed at least a _little_ bit of longing for that lost Eden. "But as it is, I'm free, and you'll be free of the conditions the Ministry imposed on you in a while. What are you going to do?"  
  
"Manage the family business," Draco said. Nothing else had occurred to him. It seemed that the boundaries of his thoughts were confronting him all over today.  
  
"But your father isn't going to die for a long time, is he?" Harry looked at him with careful eyes. "What are you going to do until then?"  
  
"Learn how to manage the family business."  
  
Harry rolled his eyes, and Draco relented. "I always thought learning would occupy a lot of my time," he said. "But I did picture--I don't know, finding my place back in society. Learning how to live in a world with less reverence for my name. Practicing any spells I wanted to know. Learning languages. Getting married."  
  
Harry smiled at him. "Those sound wonderful. I'll be glad to help you with them."  
  
"But?" Draco asked delicately.  
  
"Not twenty-four hours a day. Not thirty days a month." Harry's face was sober. "I think both of us need a break, both of us need someone other than the other person in our lives. I've been glad that your mum was here several times, and I have friends. You've only had me, and your parents, for a few months now." Carefully, he touched Draco's face. "Eventually, we'll find a balance, and maybe things will calm down enough that I'll feel I can move back into the Manor. But not for a year or so, at least."  
  
 _He's talking about a year. He never intended to abandon me._  
  
That eased yet another fear Draco hadn't considered, and so he took Harry's hands and said, "Yes. All right. I don't like it, not completely, but I'll get used to it."  
  
Harry's face flashed with such relief and beauty that Draco couldn't help leaning in and kissing him. And after that, they both found other things to do than argue.  
  



	30. A Home of His Own

“I wish you would reconsider this,” Narcissa said. She had been sitting in Harry’s bedroom when he came back through the fireplace to consider whether he wanted to take any of the pillows on the immense bed with him to his flat. “I know that Draco has accepted it, in the way he accepts some things.”  
  
Harry smiled. “With sulking?”  
  
“Yes. And I do not like to see my son so lower his dignity.” Narcissa faced him and reached out a hand. Harry came over and took it. He wouldn’t put artificial distance between them when she had helped him so much.   
  
“Would it make such a difference for you to stay here, and have another suite of private rooms to retreat to if you felt the need?” Narcissa asked softly, looking him over. Harry didn’t know what she was looking for. Perhaps she didn’t, either, because she didn’t seem inclined to scold him. “You could have more rooms than this if you only asked. Whatever you ask, we can grant it to you.”  
  
“Including the sensation of me owning the home?” Harry asked.  
  
Narcissa paused, and listened.  
  
Harry had the feeling that this might be his best chance to explain the truth, perhaps even in terms that would make Draco happier, so he took it. “I love Draco,” he said. “But I’ve  _never_ had a space of my own. My parents’ home is destroyed and gone. I had a cupboard as my only space in my relatives’ house until I was eleven, and then I was locked in the room they gave me.” Narcissa’s hand squeezed down on his. Harry waited until she let go, and then continued. “I love Hogwarts, but students can’t own space there, either. And you know the circumstances I came here under, no matter how much they may have changed.”  
  
“I do not know,” Narcissa said, her voice reflective now, “if this would hurt Draco so badly if it wasn’t in the Muggle world.”  
  
Harry shrugged. “That’s a matter of practicality and safety, as much as anything else. Even if I had a heavily warded property in the wizarding world, there would be people trying to break through my wards and bother me. There are so many wizards who don’t know how to navigate the Muggle world that I’m more likely to be left alone.”  
  
“There is that,” Narcissa said, with a nod. “And I have tried to explain to Draco that Floo and Apparition bring you as close to us as being in the next room would be.”  
  
Harry smiled. “Did you also tell him that I’m only going to spend a few days a month in the Muggle flat at first? I’ll be here for almost every meal, and I’ll sleep here as often as I do there.”  
  
“It did not seem to make a great difference,” Narcissa murmured.  
  
Harry sighed and sat down on the bed. “I want to have a place of my own,” he admitted. “That’s the most profound reason that I’m doing this. It’s always been true, and I can tell Draco more about the Dursleys if he needs to understand, but he’s not going to change my mind or convince me it’s not important.”  
  
“There is another layer underneath the surface.” Narcissa’s eyes were reflective.  
  
Harry nodded. “I want to know if we  _can_ be apart. I had a talk with my old girlfriend that made me wonder how much of this is convenience and just because you’re the family that sheltered me.” Narcissa made a quick gesture with one hand, but Harry pushed on. “I think a lot of it is that Draco and I love each other, and that’s  _real._ But if it falls apart because I’m away for a little while, then I want to know now. I want to know how real it is.”  
  
Narcissa gave him a frown that Harry didn’t know how to interpret. “There are other ways to test that. Less extreme ones.”  
  
“But this  _isn’t_ extreme.” Harry was starting to wish that he could just project his thoughts straight into people’s heads. He knew Legilimency wasn’t exactly that, but he was starting to think mastering it would be worthwhile. “It’s being apart for a little while, a few hours a day. I need to know.”  
  
Narcissa looked down at the bed. Harry felt his stomach tremble, but held his ground. He wanted her to approve of his plan, but he should have known she wouldn’t. She didn’t approve of anything that cost Draco time, or trouble, or pain.  
  
And in the end, he wouldn’t let her disapproval change his mind. This was  _important._ He needed his own time and space, too. And it was an experiment of sorts. If he was really unhappy without Draco, that could prove his love was real, too. And he could always move back. He didn’t understand why Draco was treating it like a permanent separation.  
  
Someone moved at the door. Narcissa looked over, and Harry did, too. Draco was standing there, his face set in a frown that made him look extraordinarily like his mother.  
  
“Can I come in?” Draco asked. “I think we have some things to talk about.”  
  
*  
  
His mum rose at once, and nodded slightly to Draco as she walked past him. For a second, her hand pressed his shoulder.  
  
Draco knew what that meant. She was wishing him luck, and at the same time, she didn’t think he needed it. She had sometimes done the same thing when he was trying to persuade his father of something, and she thought Draco would win.  
  
Harry gazed wistfully at Draco. Draco wished he wouldn’t. That implied Draco had gone beyond reach, or that Harry was about to.  
  
“I don’t want to hurt you,” Harry began. “But I need to know how far we can be apart, and I want—I  _need_ some space. I’ve never had that. I want it.”  
  
Draco nodded. That made sense to him. “I want to know why you’re so sure that what we have isn’t real.”  
  
“I think it is,” said Harry. “So it should be able to stretch and be flexible and  _survive_ something like this.”  
  
Draco closed his hands into fists behind his back. “So, in a way, it’s a compliment?”  
  
Harry nodded, his expression sober.  
  
If he was going to take this seriously, then Draco was, too. “Fine. But I want to come with you and see this flat.”  _See what’s so great about it that you won’t stay in the Manor with me for the rest of your days._ That really was what Draco had pictured them doing, although he did have to acknowledge Harry’s words the other day about getting a job.  
  
“I never planned not to show it to you,” said Harry, with a funny little smile that made Draco reach out and take his hand. “Except if you didn’t want to see it. I thought you might dislike the idea of me being there so much you wouldn’t want to visit.”  
  
“Of course I want to see it,” Draco said, and his voice softened a little. He hadn’t understood what his disapproval had looked like to Harry, any more than Harry had understood what his moving out had looked like to Draco. “I would never abandon you, and that’s not going to change unless it turns out—well, unless you start hating me or something.” That was the only thing he could think of off the top of his head that would make him turn his back on Harry. He wouldn’t stay with someone who wanted to humiliate him the way that Harry had wanted to in school.  
  
But it wasn’t his Gryffindor rival who walked beside him now, or reached out and tossed Floo powder into the fire and called, “Harry’s Rest.”  
  
Draco snorted lightly as they whirled out of the fire. He was still more graceful than Harry, he noted, even though this was Harry’s flat. “At least you didn’t name it Hero’s Rest or something of the sort.”  
  
“I’m not a hero,” said Harry, and waved his hand around at the ceiling and walls before Draco could comment further. “What do you think?”  
  
Draco tried to look at it with considering and not horrified eyes. In one way,  _of course_ it was a horrible place; it had taken Harry from him.  
  
But he knew Harry was anxiously waiting for his judgment, and although Draco hated the beige and white colors of the walls on sight, he kept looking. He noted the small size of the bathroom, the unimaginative tile covering everything, the dust on the windowsills that meant no house-elf had ever been here.  
  
But he noticed the little corners, too, where Harry had already wedged a tiny bookshelf and a pair of chairs that Draco’s parents had said he could take from the Manor. It was like Harry was filling every corner with himself, breathing deep and shoving himself into every piece of the flat.  
  
“It could use some changing of the colors,” said Draco, turning around and seeing a small door off to the right. When he opened it, he saw the plainest and narrowest bedroom he had ever beheld. It was probably worse than the rooms that the benighted Hufflepuffs had to share in  _their_ House. But he managed a smile. “Are you going to soften the bed at all?”  
  
“Oh, yeah.” Harry put a hand on his shoulder, and Draco turned around and saw his eyes shining with what looked like a kind of shy excitement. “I know that it’s not going to be as luxurious as the Manor, of course not, but I don’t intend to give up  _all_ comforts.”  
  
Draco sniffed and put a hand over his heart. “You can’t imagine how much it comforts me to hear you say that.”  
  
Harry grinned and stepped back. “What were you saying about the colors?”  
  
Draco watched Harry with one cautious eye, but it did seem that Harry was inclined to let him do as he wanted, and this was a way to show that he was still an active part of Harry’s life (as well as making sure Harry didn’t live in such awful surroundings that he would have nightmares). “I’d like to at least change the walls to clean white,” he said. “Not this awful shade. Ivory only looks good on ancient artifacts.”  
  
“What about elephant tusks?”  
  
Draco rolled his eyes at Harry and moved forwards, lifting his wand and giving it the proper swish and flick. He hadn’t performed this spell often, and he didn’t want to get it wrong. “If you had any of those here, then I’d make an exception for them. But I don’t think you’re about to have them, are you?”  
  
“No,” muttered Harry, in what sounded like fascination, as he watched the walls of the bathroom turn to deep blue.  
  
Draco nodded, and then turned and changed the walls of the drawing room to bright white, with green accents on the paper up near the ceiling and along a hand’s span or so above the floor. “And then you could have curtains, if you wanted them,” he said, looking doubtfully at the dingy windows. He was less skilled with Transfiguration than just changing the color of something, so he decided to leave that up to Harry. “And take some more furniture from the Manor, for Merlin’s sake. There’s no law that says you have to buy the most rickety Muggle rubbish you can find.”  
  
Harry was shaking silently, one hand clapped over his mouth. Draco turned to him and struck a deliberately haughty pose, because he saw no reason not to. “Unless you’d rather ignore my advice altogether, and just live in the middle of dirt and ugliness.”  
  
“No,” said Harry, and took his hand away from his mouth to reveal a shining smile instead of the smirk or snicker Draco had expected. “It wasn’t what you said. It was the way you said it.”  
  
“As if?” Draco asked. He was still willing to allow the humor, but not unless Harry shared it.  
  
“As if you couldn’t imagine anything more horrible.” Harry reached out and put his arm around Draco’s shoulders, guiding him back towards the fireplace. “I think I could imagine a lot more horrible things. Like what would have happened if you’d never rescued me from the goblins.”  
  
Draco shook his head, trying to think of any world where that wouldn’t have happened. “I would have done that. Even if we didn’t owe you any life-debts. I would have insisted on it.”  
  
Harry gave him an intense, fond look. “Did you perhaps have a little crush on me even before this started?” he half-sang, under his breath.  
  
Draco sniffed. “I’m not about to admit the subtle nuances of my mind to someone incapable of understanding them.”  
  
That got him another fond look, and Draco blinked as he began, finally, to understand. They had a love strong enough that it could survive this sort of teasing. Draco wouldn’t have said that was the case a month ago. Well, a week ago, even. Then, his only thought had been keeping Harry close to his side and not giving him the chance to go somewhere else and  _think_ about things, in case he decided he didn’t love Draco after all. He’d been worried and fretful about the visit to the Burrow that Harry had made, in case Ginny Weasley managed to persuade him to get back together with her.  
  
Now, Draco understood what Harry was driving at. If he believed in Harry, if he trusted him—if he loved him—then he shouldn’t have those fears so strongly. He could be jealous and even fearful without being  _sure_ that it would only take a moment of exposure to Ginny Weasley before Harry would be dreaming about ginger babies. If their bond was as strong and secure as Draco wanted it to be, then he should trust Harry more than he did.  
  
“I think you know, now,” said Harry, pausing and looking into his eyes as they stood by the fireplace.  
  
“Know what?” Draco supposed he could have moved away from Harry and back through the fireplace as Harry had been directing him to, but he wanted to stay here until Harry had said whatever it was he was going to say.  
  
“Know why I wanted to do this. Know why I wanted some private space, and that we  _can_ have that and not lose our bond, either.” Harry leaned forwards until his forehead was resting against Draco’s. “You understand. Thank you.”  
  
It was wonderful to hold Harry’s shoulders and feel the tension drain out of him, and know he had been responsible for that, the way he had been responsible for  _causing_ Harry’s tension, before. And Draco reminded himself that he could come over to visit when he wanted, and Harry would still spend a lot of time with him.  
  
“Will you eat dinner at the Manor tonight?” he murmured.  
  
Harry smiled at him, and kissed him on the forehead, then on the lips. “Of course I will,” he murmured, when they pulled back and Draco, at least, was feeling a little dazed. “And join you in your bedroom afterwards.”  
  
Draco went back through the fire grinning. He was no longer worried. There would come other times of worry, he was sure; his relationship with Harry would certainly never be perfect. But he did think that it wouldn’t have  _this_ particular obstacle bouncing up and down like a piece of floating rubbish in water again.  
  
*  
  
Harry stood in his flat and looked slowly around, taking in everything, both the furniture he had chosen and the small magical touches Draco had added.  
  
They mingled, he thought. He hadn’t believed that would be the case. He had thought he would still lead largely separated lives, and go to the shops in the Muggle world when he was at the flat, and to Diagon Alley when he was at the Manor.   
  
But seeing this, it reminded him that he was a wizard who had grown up in the Muggle world, and a wizard who had escaped goblin slavery, and someone famous who could find comfort in anonymity. Perhaps he could take Draco to the shops in London. Perhaps he could use magic to heat his flat and make life more comfortable here.  
  
Suddenly, the world seemed to spread out in front of him like an ocean lit by the sun, shimmering with not only the ownership of his own space, but all the possibilities of freedom that slavery would have denied him.  
  
Harry took a deep breath for nothing but the pleasure of the air, even such small and dusty air as Draco would probably say was in a Muggle flat, and then turned and began to change the color of the walls again. The accents Draco had added were the same shade of green as his eyes, which Harry reckoned made sense, but which wasn’t his favorite color.  
  
They would be all right. He was alive, and happy, and free.  
  
With Draco’s help, and Narcissa’s, and his friends’, and even Lucius’s if you looked at it from the angle of him surrendering his vault so Harry could walk away from the bank, he had won.  
  
 **The End.**


End file.
